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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

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SECOND "OPY. 
I8b9. 




WHAT SHALL WE THINK 
OF CHRISTIANITY? 



WHAT SHALL WE THINK 
OF CHRISTIANITY? 

THE LEVERING LECTURES BEFORE THE 
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 

• 1899 



/ 

By WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE, D.D. 

■i 

Author of 
"an outline of christian theology." 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
NEW YORK . 1899 

L 






559 



Copyright, 1899, 
By Charles Scribner's Sons. 

TWOCOPIES R£C£IVEO. 




John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



LC Control Number 







tmp96 031614 



(7 s 






CJjese 3Lectitres, 



NOW PUBLISHED AS THEY WERE DELIVERED, 

ARE DEDICATED, IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE, 

TO 

MR. EUGENE LEVERING, 

The Founder of the Course, 

AND 

TO THE DELIGHTFUL AUDIENCES THAT LISTENED 

TO THE3I. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
I. The Christian People 1 

II. The Christian Doctrine .... 48 

III. The Christian Power 98 



The sower went forth to sow his seed: 
and as he sowed, some fell by the way side ; 
and it was trodden under foot, and the birds 
of the heaven devoured it. And other fell 
on the rock; and as soon as it grew, it 
withered away, because it had no moisture. 
And other fell amidst the thorns ; and the 
thorns grew with it, and choked it. And 
other fell into the good ground, and grew, 
and brought forth fruit a hundredfold. He 
that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 

So is the kingdom of God, as if a man 
should cast seed up07i the earth ; and should 
sleep and rise night and day, and the seed 
should spring up and grow, he knoweth not 
how. The earth beareth fruit of herself '; 
first the blade, then the ear, then the full 
corn in the ear. 



WHAT SHALL WE THINK 
OF CHRISTIANITY? 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

I AM heartily glad to speak, in this 
presence, of the things that occupy my 
thoughts and make my life, and to speak 
with the utmost freedom. I shall be glad 
if what I may say fulfils in some degree 
the apologetic purpose of this lectureship, 
by making some Christian realities in 
which I believe more clear and more help- 
ful to some who listen. I believe in the 
greatness and worth of Jesus Christ, and 
I have some sense of the preciousness of 
his gifts to mankind : and I propose that 
in these three lectures we look together at 
three great contributions that he has made 

to the moral wealth and welfare of hu- 

1 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 



manity. These contributions are the 
Christian People, the Christian Doctrine, 
and the Christian Power. 

My reason for selecting these three gifts 
of Christ for consideration is, that these 
three go far toward making up that great 
fact in history and life which we call 
Christianity. When Jesus, the founder of 
Christianity, left the world, what did he 
leave behind him that he did not find 
here ? What elements had he added to 
the life of mankind, and brought in as his 
contribution to the future? He left in 
the world, at least in vigorous and prom- 
ising beginnings, a people, a doctrine, and 
a power : — a people, few but attentive 
and receptive; a doctrine, growing into 
fulness and vitality through their experi- 
ence ; and a power, already operative and 
of boundless potency. These combined 
bequests of his had at first no common 
name. At first their unity could not be 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 



clearly discerned. Nevertheless, he had 
left a unity in the world, not a mere 
sprinkling of detached results, and in due 
time the unity asserted itself. After a 
little his disciples were named, and proba- 
bly nicknamed, Christians. The nick- 
name stayed upon them, and came to be 
their chosen name for whatsoever belonged 
to them in relation to their Master. In 
the name they gloried, for it denoted that 
new something, unlike the possessions of 
mankind, yet normal and suitable to man, 
which Jesus had brought in. Their church 
was soon the Christian church, and their 
doctrine the Christian doctrine ; and the 
unified result of Jesus' presence among 
men came by and by to be known as 
Christianity. Both the name and the fact 
have continued until now. If we seek to 
know what Christianity is, and of what 
elements it is composed, how can we de- 
scribe it better than by saying that it is 
made up of these three elements, the peo- 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 



pie, the doctrine, and the power that Jesus 
left in the world as his abiding gift to 
man? If we find more than these, we 
shall find it, I judge, mainly by unfolding 
what these contain. In every age these 
three constitute, or at least efficiently 
represent, what we call Christianity. By 
means of these the Christian name has 
been kept alive among men, and the Chris- 
tian influence has been exerted. 

I wish to inquire how well these gifts 
of Christ, these elements of Christianity, 
have done their work, and of how much 
attention they are really worthy now, 
after so long a time. They all stand for 
the holy and beneficent name of Jesus, 
and are supposed to convey to us, each in 
its own manner, the gift and influence that 
he brought. All ought to bear a decided 
apologetic value. Such a value they are 
universally expected to show. It is as- 
sumed that the Christian people fairly 
represent the human fruit that the Saviour 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 5 

of men intended to produce, that the 
Christian doctrine fairly expresses what 
the Master meant to teach, and that the 
Christian power is such as the Lord of 
men is satisfied to be exerting. These 
gifts of Christ are such that in the light of 
them Christ himself can scarcely fail to be 
judged. Of this we cannot complain, nor 
can we imagine that he himself would 
make objection. He who said of men, 
" By their fruits ye shall know them," 
will not refuse to submit to a fair use of 
the test that he has proposed for others. 
Christianity may reasonably be estimated 
in view of these its constituent elements, 
if only we can manage to do the judging 
fairly. 

Yet how various the judgments are! 
and we cannot wonder. Some say that 
the Christian enterprise is the one success- 
ful thing in all the world : the people are 
the salt of the earth, the doctrine is the 
light of the world, and the power is God's 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 



own power for salvation. Others say that 
these fruits are no special credit to him 
whose name they bear : long time and 
little done, poor fruit and little of it, all 
sorts of imperfections in the people, incon- 
sistencies and irrationalities infesting the 
doctrine, great unevenness in the operation 
of the power. All the way between these 
two extremes the judgments range. We 
are living now in an atmosphere that is 
rife with criticism : for there are many 
who sincerely think that Christianity has 
been tried in the balances and found want- 
ing, and is justly condemned by its failure 
to produce a people, a doctrine, or a power 
proportioned in excellence to its claims. 

In what I may have the honor to say in 
this presence, I desire to show, if possible, 
what is true about these three gifts of 
Christ which constitute our Christianity. 
I wish to look at them fairly, if I can. 
I am not here to defend what bears the 
name of Christian merely because it bears 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 



that name, nor am I here to surrender 
what is precious because it is not perfect. 
I shall inquire what can reasonably be ex- 
pected of these gifts in the world, and 
how well they are fulfilling rational ex- 
pectations. I shall note some of the con- 
ditions attendant upon the rise, growth, 
and continuance of these three elements 
of Christianity, in order that we may 
judge, with some fairness, how well they 
have done their work and realized the 
aims of Christ. Thus I shall try to as- 
certain what we ought to think of Chris- 
tianity. And perhaps we may discern 
something of the winning and convincing 
beauty of the Lord in these his gifts. 

In the present hour we consider the 
Christian People. 

There is no mystery about the beginning 
of the Christian people. Jesus left in the 
world the little band of believers in him- 



8 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

self that had gathered around him in his 
ministry. They were disciples learning 
of him, and some of them were already 
named apostles, messengers, or heralds. 
We read of a hundred and twenty in Jeru- 
salem, and above five hundred, perhaps in 
Galilee. Very soon the hundreds became 
thousands. Out from Palestine his name 
went to the Roman world, and in Antioch, 
Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome itself, mul- 
titudes were added to the Christian com- 
pany. By the time that Jesus, if he had 
lived, would have attained to the age of 
three-score years and ten, the Roman 
empire was dotted over with Christian 
churches, and a people devoted to his 
Name was everywhere. 

Who were they, and what ? What prin- 
ciples were operative in the formation of 
the Christian people ? How came it to be 
what it was ? I shall be glad if I can set 
forth and illustrate the simple and com- 
monplace fact that the normal and neces- 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 



sary laws of life had their way here. 
Christianity, placed in the world, experi- 
enced the inevitable, and took the con- 
sequences of existence. The Christian 
people, first and later, was such as it 
could be. 

The Founder, as we know, drew his first 
followers from among the Jews. Not from 
the circle of the high religionists did they 
come, but from that better circle which 
was found among the common people. 
Here were the Jewish homes, where relig- 
ion was pure and sweet, and faith took 
hold upon the God of the fathers, — where 
response to a new and holy influence, 
therefore, was most possible. Out of the 
common class, the fishermen and the poor, 
came the first to follow Jesus. Legalism 
had not blinded the eyes of these to spirit- 
ual beauty, and the simple saw the glory 
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Igno- 
rant of many things they were, and in 
religion itself they needed long and patient 



10 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPIE 

teaching, yet these were the men and 
women to whom the Master could say, 
" Blessed are your eyes for they see, and 
your ears for they hear." 

When the Master had gone, these were 
his heralds. Enlightened they were in 
heart by the power of love and the insight 
that comes from spiritual fellowship, glow- 
ing and enthusiastic was their faith, and 
yet they were themselves, and could pro- 
claim only what had become real to them. 
No one learns great things thoroughly in a 
single lesson. It is vain to imagine that 
the first disciples could know their Master 
perfectly at once, for even the divine 
Spirit cannot dispense with the element 
of time in guiding human beings into 
truth. The fact simply is that a new, 
glorious, uplifting, character-making power 
was taking hold of men. Forth from 
Jesus came a mighty transforming influ- 
ence. It took men as it found them, for 
it could not do otherwise, and it wrought 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 1 1 

upon them as they could be wrought upon, 
for it could not do more. It was a heav- 
enly gift amid earthly elements, a divine 
power working upon human materials. 
The first Christian people were the human 
materials upon which this divine power 
had done, and was doing, its initial work. 
They were this, and nothing more. 

We can trace the process. The Chris- 
tian message met its inevitable fate in the 
hearing that it received. The hearers 
heard with their own ears, and understood 
by means of their own preconceptions. 
Every growing thing grows according to 
the soil that it falls into, and the seed of 
the word was no exception. In Jerusalem, 
the message was taken into minds full of 
inherited Jewish ideas. The better spirit 
of the Jewish religion and the narrow con- 
straints of Jewish thought conspired to 
make a Jewish-Christian people, in whom 
the large conceptions and spiritual aspira- 
tions of Jesus could find but scanty wel- 



12 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

come. We know how near the new faith 
came to being smothered to death in a 
Christian Judaism, and how Paul was the 
chosen vessel of Christ to carry his name 
out from these limitations to the Gentiles, 
the nations of the world. The first group 
of the Christian people came near burying 
the gospel alive under their old ideas of 
narrow religion. 

Paul and his companions did carry the 
Name abroad, and the Name went abroad 
with power. Through the Roman world 
it went, everywhere finding its welcome. 
Multitudes received it with joy, and found 
fresh life in Christ. Who were these? 
These too were the poor and untrained. 
Many of them were slaves, and many 
others were of low station and narrow life. 
Christ made life a new and larger thing, 
and they felt, as they well might feel, that 
the best thing in the world had come to 
them. Among the believers were some of 
large intelligence and power. Some of 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 1 3 

them could receive the new gift not only 
into good and honest hearts, but into lives 
somewhat prepared to bring forth the 
worthiest fruit. Yet where was the mind 
wherein there were no conceptions that 
could enter into union with the new faith 
only to injure it and diminish its effective- 
ness? If Jewish legalism, monotheistic 
though narrow, required time to be out- 
grown, how must it be with polytheism, 
with the popular superstitions that hung 
about immemorial beliefs, and with the 
moral corruptions that had sprung from 
the coarse worships of an earlier day ? 
How long would such influences as these 
linger when a new moral force, still new 
indeed, was entering to transform the life ? 
Paul rebukes his converts in Corinth for 
low standards of living, and low vices 
inherited from a long antiquity, and this 
is exactly what we might expect. Nothing 
else was possible than that such evils 
should abide to trouble the friends of 



14 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

Christlike goodness in the church. Errors 
in thought also, misconceptions of the 
gospel, sprang up from the remains of old 
thinking. At what date such evils could 
reasonably be expected to disappear, let 
him tell who dares to think he knows. A 
Christian people could not be made except 
from people who were filled with material 
of thought and character quite contrary to 
the aim of Christianity. 

Nevertheless the new faith made its 
people. It was not defeated, it was hon- 
orably successful. It was far from making 
a people that fulfilled its ideal, but it made 
a people worthy of its endeavor. In the 
first age there was a distinctively Christian 
life, lived by a distinctively Christian com- 
pany of men and women. It was a very 
simple life, lived by a very simple people, 
but it was animated in great measure by 
the holy and gracious mind of Christ. 
How often have we wished that the 
glimpses into it that are possible to us 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 1 5 

were not so very few ! Why, we have 
asked, has not more been preserved to us 
of the plain common life of the Christians 
of the first and second centuries ? But it 
is not surprising. They were not a liter- 
ary folk. Their writers were few, and 
that they were making history they had 
no idea. Such glimpses as we do obtain 
are extremely precious. It was a great 
gift when we recovered the long-lost 
" Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," with 
its simple and unconscious revelation of 
the people and their ways. Just when 
and where its scenes were enacted we may 
not know, but it is certain that here we 
have a genuine view of life as it was 
among the early Christians. As we read 
we see that the life was simple, it was 
devout, it was brotherly, it was hopeful, 
it was pure in aim and aspiration. It is 
easy to paint the Roman life of the first 
century in black, ignoring the brighter 
and worthier elements in the common 



1 6 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPIE 



world of that time ; and yet, though we 
paint ever so fairly, it is plain when we 
view this simple picture of Christian living 
that a new uplifting force has entered to 
the great Roman world, and a little group 
of humanity, if no more, has been intro- 
duced to sweeter, purer, worthier life. 
The limitations of the new people are 
written into the record as clearly as their 
virtues, and the common faults of human 
nature crop out in the conditions that 
call for counsel and reproof; yet here is 
a genuine fruit of the presence of Jesus 
in the world for which our human race 
may well be thankful. 

Still we turn from the picture, and from 
all companion-pictures that we possess, 
feeling that the Christians of the first and 
second centuries, taken as a mass, were 
not capable of propagating the Christian- 
ity that the Founder meant for mankind. 
They possessed it only in part, and how 
could they pass on the traditions of a 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE \J 

better faith than they held ? The inevi- 
table had happened: the new faith had 
taken snch people as it found, and they 
had received it as they could. But a 
second inevitable followed. The people 
were changed by the new faith, but the new 
faith was changed by the people. Chris- 
tianity transformed the people toward its 
likeness, and was in turn transformed by 
them toward their likeness. Shakespeare, 
complaining, in one of his Sonnets says, 

' ' My nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." 

In the same strain Christianity might 

speak. It made a new people, better than 

it found them ; but they in turn inevitably 

made a new Christianity, with its strong 

points illustrated and confirmed in their 

experience, but with weakness brought in 

from their defects. The power of the new 

faith to produce a people worthy of its 

aims was inevitably diminished, less or 

2 



1 8 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 



more, by the faults that it was compelled 
to take into itself from the people through 
whom it wrought. Intractableness of 
material modified the force. 

Or, in other words, the Christian people, 
with all its good and evil, with all its 
strength and weakness, with all its glory 
and shame, is the true resultant of the 
force that has been working and the ma- 
terial that it has wrought upon. This is 
one, out of many, of the historical illus- 
trations of the Master's parable of the four 
kinds of soil. The good seed of the king- 
dom was sown in the world, and prospered 
in its growth according to the soil into 
which it fell. In some places it took no 
root at all, and in others it secured only 
a temporary life. Where it did grow, it 
sometimes had to grow in soil where there 
were thorn-roots already in the ground, 
and it must needs grow up among them. 
If it is asked why an ideal Christian peo- 
ple did not grow up, sufficient to vanquish 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 1 9 

all doubts of the transforming power, the 
answer is that the good seed did not 
always fall into the clear soil, but often, 
nay always, into places where there was 
something to check and something to mod- 
ify its growth. The good seed is seed in 
a thorn-field. But then, lest we be dis- 
couraged, we may remember that it was in 
order to redeem the field from the thorns 
that the seed of Christ was sown, and that 
in God's world good seed roots deeper, in 
the long season, than the thorns. 

This glance into the early period is 
enough to illustrate the conditions that 
insured to the rising Christian people 
both strength and weakness, victory and 
disappointment. Similar conditions have 
always existed. There is no time for 
detailed description of that which the 
Christian seed has produced in the thorn- 
field, but we will glance down the long 
line of results in history, and see, so far as 



20 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 



we may, what manner of people it is that 
Christ has brought into the world through 
the Christian grace working amid obstruct- 
ing influences. 

The Christian people has a certain unity ; 
but in what does it consist ? There is no 
one type of humanity, no one nationality 
or race or class or training represented 
here. The Christian people is gathered 
out of all nations and kindreds and peo- 
ples and tongues, and yet it is marked 
by one type of experience and character. 
Only very broadly can this be asserted, I 
know, but broadly it can be asserted. 
There is a set of conceptions and experi- 
ences by which the Christian character is 
dominated, and where these are not, there 
are no Christians. They did not all come 
into the world with Christ, but they all 
gather themselves about him into a char- 
acter-giving unity. The seriousness of 
life, the holiness and love of the one God, 
the reality of sin, free salvation from sin 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 21 

* — - — ■ 

by the divine grace in Christ, human duty- 
learned from God in Christ, an inward 
power for goodness, a deathless hope, — 
these are the fundamental conceptions of 
Christianity, and the Christian people are 
those whose experience corresponds to 
these conceptions. Or, more truly, Christ 
presents these as realities, and the Chris- 
tian people are those who experience these 
realities. Such experiences create a type 
of character. No other religion ever had 
such experiences to offer, and therefore 
none ever made a people like the Christian 
people. Knowledge of God is common 
enough, but not such knowledge of God : 
knowledge of sin is common, but not of 
such deliverance from sin : knowledge of 
duty, but not such inspiration for duty : 
hope, but not such hope. When there 
comes to be a people formed, however im- 
fectly, upon the experience of these reali- 
ties, that people is the work of Christ. 
Members of such a people, bearing such 



22 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

a character, have been known in all the 
Christian ages. They have been imper- 
fect, all, with every style and combination 
of imperfections. Every side of the char- 
acteristic experience has been lacking 
somewhere, and somewhere exaggerated 
or distorted. They have not understood 
one another very well, and have often 
failed to recognize one another. Never- 
theless the common quality has marked 
them, less or more, and they have been 
brothers whether they knew it or not. 
The people who know by experience about 
sin and salvation, and learn their duty 
from their Saviour God, and lift their 
eyes to immortality in him, these do make 
one family, a noble family, and God is 
not ashamed of them, to be called their 
God. 

A character-making force working upon 
various and imperfect men will, of course, 
produce some best results. Some men are 
best prepared beforehand for Christ's in- 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 2$ 

fluence, and in some the oppositions are 
most effectively conquered. These are the 
leaders, the best fruits. Every religion 
has its saints, and Christianity has its long 
calendar and its innumerable saints un- 
named. The overtowering souls that 
stand high above the rest, the ones in 
whom Christianity has done most, — a 
noble company they form. If we could 
clearly behold a group of the great Chris- 
tians of the world, discerning their real 
spiritual beauty, we should reverently bear 
witness to the excellence of the heavenly 
gift. In the group of greatest Christians 
we should find men and women of deep 
and serious heart ; persons not light- 
minded, but to whom life is full of mean- 
ing ; who know evil, both in themselves 
and in the world, with a dreadful sense of 
its reality ; who have discerned the infinite 
grace that freely saves, and come to know 
the eternal goodness in the God who loves 
forever ; who know the gladness of deliv- 



24 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPIE 

erance from evil, the brightness of hope 
and the exhilaration of strong endeavor ; 
who have loved their fellows with a divine 
affection and labored for their good ; who 
know the eagerness of high aims, and have 
used high powers for highest purposes ; 
and from whom there has gone forth a 
warm radiance of blessing as they have 
walked among men. Children of faith, 
they 'have endured as seeing him who is 
invisible. Children of hope, they have 
purified themselves, even as he is pure. 
Children of love, they have gazed upon 
God's glory and been changed into the 
same image. Mark all their imperfec- 
tions, not denying a single genuine one, 
and yet we must bear testimony that 
these great Christian souls that have been 
among us are a worthy product of the 
presence and work of Christ in the world. 
Without them, how much poorer would 
the history of our race have been ! What 
would it be to drop from the record the 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 2$ 

names, and from the human stock the 
personalities, of Paul and John, of Origen 
and Athanasius, of Ambrose and Augustine 
and Monica, of Chrysostom and Gregory 
the Great and Thomas Aquinas, of Tauler 
and Thomas a Kempis, of Savonarola and 
Dante and Michelangelo, of Francis of 
Assisi and Xavier and Loyola, of Wyclif 
and Huss, of Luther and Melanchthon, 
of William the Silent and Cromwell and 
Gustavus Adolphus, of Baxter and Bun- 
yan, of Milton and George Fox, of Calvin 
and John Knox, of the Wesleys and White- 
field and Edwards, of Shaftesbury and 
Gladstone and Leo Thirteenth, of Eliza- 
beth Fry and Florence Nightingale, of 
Livingstone, Channing, Moody, and Phil- 
lips Brooks ? If besides these there have 
stood forth leaders who misrepresented 
the Christian quality, — which not one 
even of these has perfectly expressed, — 
what else can be expected when a holy 
power is working through imperfect men, 



26 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

whose training has prepared them only in 
part for their honorable mission ? 

We must not think that the list of the 
great adequately represents the Christian 
people. We must remember the rank and 
file if we wish to think justly of the whole. 
Saints are of many kinds, not all equally 
eminent in the sight of the world. The 
lesser ones are precious, as well as the 
greater. Two classes of saints have at- 
tracted special admiration. The church 
has often admired the saints of the cloister, 
withdrawn from the world, given to medi- 
tation and prayer, rebuking the evil of the 
common life by retirement and reflection 
upon better things. Eyes that have not 
been attracted to these have been drawn 
to the saints of the open field, strong 
workmen or warriors of the Lord, doing 
large work and known of all men. But 
Christ, who gave some as apostles and 
some as prophets, has also raised up saints 
of the household, who are mediators of 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 2*] 

grace and strength to those whom they 
love; saints of the sick-chamber, who 
suffer and are strong through the holy 
faith ; saints of the market-place and the 
workshop, who do the world's common 
work in the spirit of fidelity and power; 
citizen-saints, who bless the organized life 
of man by wise counsel and unselfish liv- 
ing ; scholar-saints, who minister knowl- 
edge to mankind ; and saints of the life of 
charity, who bear the heart of Christ to 
the needy. These all fall short of the 
Lord's ideal, but yet we all know that in 
them Christ has honorably accomplished 
his purpose to make for himself a people 
for his own possession, zealous of good 
works, powerful for blessing. 

Large perversions in the life and prac- 
tice of the Christian people have of course 
appeared : what would you look for ? We 
will glance at a classical instance, and see 
how naturally they came. For a while 
Christianity was the religion of the mar- 



28 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

tyrs. Pure, simple, and courageous in its 
common life, it condemned the evil world 
and insured for itself an honorable hatred. 
Unswerving in loyalty to the only God, it 
angered the Roman power again and again, 
and secured the crown of martyrdom. 
Martyrdom does not prove a cause to be 
right, and yet it always carries a strong 
suggestion to that effect. The church of 
the martyrs was kept sweet by its trials 
and perils, and the suffering church was a 
singing church, joyful in its pains and 
influential through its fortitude. There 
is a fine charm about the humble and 
hopeful church of the catacombs. But 
the church came out of the catacombs, and 
was soon placed at the head of the world's 
affairs. When Constantine professed the 
Christian name, the name instantly became 
fashionable. Profession of Chris tianitv 
was now the way to promotion and advan- 
tage : therefore the church-doors were 
crowded with people rushing in. The 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 29 

so-called Christian people of the middle 
of the fourth century were most of them 
not Christians at all, in any worthy sense : 
they were nominal converts, scarcely 
changed from the paganism of antiquity. 
Yet they were the recognized Christian 
people of the time, and it was inevitable 
that they should set the key for the Chris- 
tianity of the time that followed. It is 
no wonder that the religious life ran low, 
and the virtue of the gospel partly van- 
ished away from those who bore the holy 
name. Here was the inevitable again. 
Victory came naturally, and deservedly, to 
the fresh and vigorous faith, as against the 
decaying paganism, but victory brought 
corruption in its train, from the necessities 
of the case. The holy power had been 
thrown out into the field of the world, 
and for the time, in certain respects, its 
nature was subdued to what it wrought in, 
like the dyer's hand. 

Another perversion in the common life 



30 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 



of the Christian people, — at least it seems 
a perversion to us of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, with our irrepressible enterprise and 
our readiness for risks and conflicts, — 
came as naturally as this. There came a 
time when a large part of the best of the 
Christian people, the most high-minded 
and the best adapted to useful living, were 
moved to withdraw from the common life 
of man. The monastic impulse came, and 
would not be refused. The souls that 
were most needed for the universal strife 
left the field for the life of quietness, and 
the best leaven for improvement of the 
evil world was withdrawn into cloisters. 
Multitudes of the men who would have 
made the best fathers, and of the women 
who would have made the best mothers, 
declined to make contribution to the stock 
of humanity. The quiet, meditative, non- 
productive life, withdrawn from the re- 
sponsibilities to which mankind is born, 
was held out as holier than the common 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPIE 3 I 

life, and the monastic ideal was set up for 
universal admiration. Good results fol- 
lowed, and also evil : great good and great 
evil. The more largely human we grow, 
the greater seems the pity that the move- 
ment went so far. Yet how inevitably it 
came about. Face to face stood the good 
and the evil, the good of the gospel and 
the evil of the world, the good of the 
reforming power and the evil, ancient and 
strong, that ought to be put away. The 
Christian people had no long traditions of 
holy warfare to inherit, and had not very 
well learned the lesson of confidence in 
the good for which they were set to con- 
tend. To many of them the case seemed 
hopeless : so great a world, how could its 
evil be conquered ? Would it not corrupt 
even those who tried to bless it ? All that 
they could do was to flee, and hide them- 
selves, and seek the safety of their souls, 
and pray to God for the victory which 
they lacked courage to seek in strife. We 



32 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

cannot wonder at the feeling. We can 
call the motive inferior to the best, as 
surely it was, but we cannot be surprised 
at the force of it, or affirm that it was 
altogether an unworthy motive. It was 
a pure motive, even if it was not the 
loftiest. The great secession from the 
daily working force of Christianity was 
one of the inevitable incidents in the 
great warfare. 

We cannot now illustrate the process 
farther. But thus, through the successive 
periods, the Christian people has gone on, 
responding to surrounding influences as 
well as to inward monitions, changing with 
changing conditions, growing with the 
common growth of mankind, influenced 
by the world which it was influencing, and 
yet maintaining a special quality and value 
of its own. Very largely it was what it 
had to be : it had the virtues of its inner 
grace, and the faults of its inheritance and 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 33 

its surroundings. It could not have been 
otherwise. 

What is the outcome? This is the 
question that concerns us now. What 
has the Lord of Christianity to show after 
all this time ? How well does the present 
Christian people commend the power that 
came into the world with Christ? How 
are Christians doing their work as a gift 
of Christ to humanity ? All sorts of opin- 
ions are held. Some say that Christian 
people are demonstrably the salt of the 
earth, without which very little that is 
sweet or good would be found among 
men: and others are sure that whatever 
power they may once have had is now 
departed. What shall we say ? 

The mixed quality of the present out- 
come calls for no apology. Absolutely, 
there could be nothing else. Those who 
discuss the Christian people as if they 
could expect to find in them an adequate 
illustration of the ideal of Christ, simply 

3 



34 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

do not know what they are talking about. 
In the conditions that have surrounded 
Christianity, such a thing is impossible. 
So the present Christian people are not to 
be defended as satisfactory, or condemned 
as worthless. They are not to be counted 
upon for perfection, or rejected for imper- 
fection. A resultant necessarily partakes 
in the nature and quality of all the forces 
that have produced it. Good and evil, 
strength and weakness, are certain to be 
present here. Christianity is the life of 
God in the soul of man, and its human 
outcome must partake in the qualities 
both of God and of man. 

If we inquire about the Christian people 
of the present day, they must be estimated 
in view of an element that I have not yet 
mentioned. I mean the great transition, 
the tremendous revolution, of our time. 
It is not as if the Christian people had 
attained to a platform where they could be 
exhibited. On the contrary, they are 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 35 

passing through the severest transition, 
perhaps, in all their history. 

Into this transition more elements enter 
than I can now name. Our part of the 
human race is at last beginning to possess 
a real self -consciousness. Information, in 
inconceivably vast amount, is being thrown 
upon the thought of the time, to be handled 
and assimilated. Thought is passing over 
from the old non-scientific methods to the 
more nearly scientific movement that mod- 
ern study has developed. Facts are scru- 
tinized with new zeal, and truth is tested 
in new ways. Inquiry knows no bounds. 
Antiquity and prescription count for noth- 
ing. We desire to know the very thing 
that is, and our certainties are differently 
grounded from those that our fathers held. 
Vast social problems arise, in which we 
are compelled to find out whether we are 
living together as we ought, and what we 
owe to one another. All fields of thought 
are transformed, and all modes and signifi- 



36 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

cances of life are altered, in this great 
time of change. Every period is a period 
of transition, but there has never been one 
like this. 

Amid these great changes the Christian 
people, as I conceive, have three things to 
do. Three things are required of them by 
the nature of the Christianity which they 
represent, and in these they must not be 
found wanting. The Christian people are 
called to-day to hold their faith, to open 
their minds, and to expand their hearts. 
First, to hold their faith. They are called 
to hold fast their sense of spiritual reality ; 
not to be shaken from their confidence in 
that living God whom they and their 
fathers have known ; to cling to the real- 
ity of religious life and the presence of 
divine help ;•' to be religious in tenderness 
of spirit and heavenliness of mind, when 
the age is almost forgetting to be religious j 
Next, to open their minds. They are 
called to perceive that they are living in a 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 37 

new age ; to believe in the validity of all 
facts and be willing to go wliere facts may- 
lead ; to accept reconstructions ; to let 
knowledge in, well assured that it will not 
drive faith out ; to be as free with knowl- 
edge as they are with faith. And while 
these two works go on, the Christian peo- 
ple are called also to expand their hearts, 
so that they shall be loving men with 
Christ's own love; to rejoice with them 
that rejoice and weep with them that weep 
and plan for them that suffer ; to bear the 
burdens of humanity with wise and help- 
ful tenderness ; to forswear aristocratic ex- 
clusiveness and minister to men as men, as 
Jesus did. This great threefold calling 
is the present calling of the Christian 
people. 

How are they fulfilling it? Not alto- 
gether well, or altogether ill. It is the 
inevitable again. We have to confess that 
there is much division of labor here : some 
hold their faith while others open their 



38 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

minds : some open their minds while others 
expand their hearts. This is not strange, 
for in a great mass of people it is only 
natural that one part of the general duty 
should be more worthily done by some 
than by others. A certain distribution of 
parts cannot fail to occur. Yet this is not 
the ideal. It is to be desired that every 
one of the Christian people should hold 
his faith, open his mind, and expand his 
heart. And toward the ideal there is 
some progress. Far from perfectly, yet 
more and more, it is coming to pass. The 
Christian people respond but slowly to 
demands upon them, — so slowly that it is 
easy to be impatient with them, — and yet 
they do respond. The mind does open, 
and yet the faith is held, and meanwhile 
the heart expands in love and helpfulness. 
Imperfectly and slowly, yet really, the 
Christian people are at least beginning to 
rise to the demands of the present age. 
It would be pleasant to praise the Chris- 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 39 

tian people here, to point out their better 
works and tell how well they are do- 
ing. But instead of this I shall do what 
perhaps my auditors do not expect of me. 
I believe that the danger that the Chris- 
tian people may miss their calling is 
greater than the need of praise for their 
successes : and a few words in this strain 
I must speak. I greatly fear that many 
among them may fail to hold their faith. 
I fear that many may fail to open their 
minds. I fear that many may fail to ex- 
pand their hearts. And my anxiety gives 
me a message. 

By failing to hold their faith I do not 
mean failing to keep their opinions. By 
faith I mean something more precious far : 
I mean the living sense of unseen spiritual 
realities, and firm trust in the living God. 
What I fear is that many Christians may 
not "see him who is invisible," and not 
live in the presence of the Father who is in 
secret. The danger is that they may be 



40 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPIE 

content with holding opinions and mistak- 
ing them for faith, and be without that 
undying sense of reality in God to which 
alone the noble name of faith belongs. 
They will then preach unreally, and talk 
insincerely, and live feebly. They will be 
Christians in name, but the secret of power 
will be theirs no longer. And I fear no 
less that many Christians may fail to open 
their minds. I know the difficulty, only 
too well. The very effort to hold their 
faith may lead them to keep their minds 
closed against knowledge that no honest 
mind can permanently refuse. To open 
the mind and hold the inner sense of 
spiritual reality is not easy for all. There 
are men enough who tell us that it cannot 
be done, and will not long be attempted. 
Unbelievers in Christianity declare the 
impossibility from one side, and a large 
class of Christians from the other. I am 
afraid that too many of the Christian peo- 
ple, mistaught from both sides, may come 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPIE 41 

to be convinced, and hold their minds un- 
worthily closed. When I reflect upon the 
profoundly conservative instincts of reli- 
gious tradition, and the surprising and 
revolutionary quality of much of the truth 
that our time brings freshly forth to us, I 
fear greatly that the impulse of resistance 
may be too strong for hosts of minds that 
ought to be opening themselves to present 
truth in faith upon the present God, and the 
victory may be where it ought not. And 
yet again I fear that the Christian people 
may fail to expand their hearts in helpful 
and sympathetic love to the men around 
them. I think I fear this most of all. I 
know how strong is the temptation to 
make love an abstract virtue, and consider 
it sufficient to love God whom we have 
not seen, while the brother whom we have 
seen makes no appeal to us. I know how 
powerful the aristocratic connections of 
much of our religious life are becoming, 
and how many churches are well content 



42 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

to dwell alone and plan for their own 
benefit, while the poor are not welcome 
among them. I know how easy is the 
sway of selfishness, and how seductive. 
The problems of society are difficult, and 
it is easy for Christians to evade responsi- 
bility for them by pleading that they are 
doing something better than attend to 
them, by preaching the gospel of eternal 
life. So on many sides I meet the danger 
that the Christian people may not act after 
the manner of Jesus in dealing with their 
fellow-men, in this solemn day when the 
problems of the life of man with man are 
as urgent as they are obscure. And all 
these fears I entertain by the side of my 
thankfulness for all the living faith, and 
all the frank open-mindedness, and all the 
warm and helpful love, that I behold in 
the Christian people and joyfully acknowl- 
edge as the work of God in them. 

I am not speaking here to a company of 
the Christian people : I am addressing a 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 43 

company of sincere and high-minded hu- 
man beings, devoted to the work of educa- 
tion. It is a company in which a Christian 
man has honorable standing if he deserves 
it, and a non-Christian man has the same 
on the same terms. Not as Christians or 
as non-Christians therefore do I address 
my auditors. All the more freely for this 
reason can I speak to them all ; and to my 
present audience I have a message. The 
Christian people are among us, and, with 
all their faults, have proved themselves a 
good gift of God to mankind. Our world 
needs them now, and needs to have them 
at their best and strongest. It never 
needed them more, for they stand for that 
high spiritual life and meaning which the 
present world is in great danger of for- 
getting. Yet here they stand, in this 
trying transition-age, surrounded by subtle 
dangers. To all who hear me in this hon- 
orable company I appeal, and I say, Help 
us Christian people of your own genera- 



44 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

tion to fulfil our calling. Whatever your 
own beliefs may be, help us to be what we 
ought. Help us to open our minds. Press 
on with your work of enlarging the boun- 
daries of knowledge. Make clear and in- 
telligible and irresistible whatever you 
discover, and urge it upon us with all 
persistency. Keep your own tempers 
sweet, in order that you may the better 
commend to us what we need to receive 
from you. Be candid with us, in order that 
we may have confidence in you and learn 
the better from you. Teach us the truth 
of the time, and teach us so wisely and in 
so fair a spirit that we cannot but receive 
what you have to offer us. Thus help us 
to open our minds. Help us also, I beg 
not less earnestly, to hold our faith, — for 
even this service does not lie beyond your 
reach. Do not profess to know that our 
faith amounts to nothing. Do not cktim 
to be sure that there is no place for faith. 
Open your minds to that great spiritual 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 45 

1 ■ ,., , ■ ■- — ■ ■ ■ ■ K 

secret which philosophy discerns, and upon 
the confines of which science itself is 
treading, and of which religion is the 
revelation. Forbear to scorn our sense of 
a great, abiding, eternal, spiritual reality, 
but rather encourage and help us to fill 
with the thought of God that space which 
cannot be left vacant without darkening 
the universe. Help us also to limit faith 
to the true field of faith. Batter down 
things that we may try to set up as objects 
of faith that are not properly such. Hold 
us to clear speech and honest declaration. 
Drive us back to our essentials and our 
simplicities. Make us miserable when we 
try to defend mere outposts as if they were 
the citadel. Compel us to assert the few 
eternal verities, and then join us in setting 
them by the side of the other certainties 
that you proclaim to us. And help us 
also, I entreat, to expand our hearts in 
sympathetic and helpful love. Reprove 
us for our selfishness when you behold it, 



46 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 

dealing with us in the faithfulness of sor- 
rowful sincerity. Come also and be our 
fellow-helpers in the field of love. All 
that is human should care for all that is 
human, and this field of humanity is as 
truly yours as ours. Inspire us to emula- 
tion of your humanitarian endeavors and 
successes. Let us together be planning 
for the larger good of our country and 
our fellows everywhere. The vast social 
problems ought to attract us all, whatever 
we are, and to hold our best attention till 
we have actually accomplished something 
for the betterment of the common lot of 
men. Work with us in the spirit of Jesus: 
for what better spirit is there for any son 
of humanity to make his own than his ? 
Thus help us to serve our kind. Whoever 
is at the front in any good endeavor, let 
us all encourage him : and together let us 
hope that the Christian people may rise 
to their true character, and fulfil the up- 
ward movement of their history, and be 



THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 47 

worthy of their Lord, and do those greater 
works of love and power which their 
Master foretold for them in the days 
when the world's work should be upon 
their shoulders. 



II 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

The Christian Doctrine begins, of course, 
with the teaching of the Founder. 

Not without reason is Jesus known as 
the Great Teacher. He was no orator, it 
is true, nor was he a formal preacher, but 
rather a quiet converser, a talker among 
men. ,Yet he spoke with marvellous 
power, and made his mark upon the in- 
most life of his hearers. Never man spoke 
like him, they said. They felt the author- 
ity that moved in his words. Only frag- 
ments of his utterance have been preserved 
to us, but the brief discourses and conver- 
sations that we read in the Gospels stand 
unique in spiritual power among the ut- 
terances of the world. They represent a 
vast mass of teaching, lost to us in form 
but preserved in its fruits : for out of his 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 49 

spiritual wealth there poured, throughout 
his ministry, an abundance of spoken truth 
that remained to perpetuate his influence 
and serve as the foundation of the Chris- 
tian doctrine. The early church started 
upon its way with its memory stored with 
the rich and fruitful utterances of the 
Master. 

One might think that the Master's utter- 
rances would forever stand alone, and 
would constitute the entire sum of doc- 
trine for Christianity. Who would ven- 
ture to add, when he had spoken ? More 
especially when the church had come, as 
it soon did come, to adore him as divine, 
how could the teaching of any others, 
especially of his own disciples, be added 
to what he had given ? Yet on the other 
hand who could be restrained from add- 
ing ? Jesus had not merely brought into 
the world a quantity of truth to leave it 
there : he had opened a perpetual fount of 

truth, which could not cease to flow. He 

4 



5<D THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

had given the Christian people a new light 
on all things. He had shown them how to 
know the things that are. That process 
of thinking, learning, and knowing, which 
is endless for man because „it is man's 
glory, would thenceforth go on, for them, 
in the light of the truth that he had taught 
them. By an inevitable and most blessed 
necessity, his friends would apply what he 
had shown them to the interpretation of 
all that they thought or knew. Paul did 
this, and John. In their teaching they 
did not merely repeat what Jesus had 
said : they looked for themselves into the 
mystery of God and of life, and for them- 
selves they thought out truth in that sub- 
lime region. This is what their Master 
desired them to do, for he came among 
them to make men of the first order, able 
to think right and true thoughts about the 
living God. He still desires the same. 
We too shall please him best if we humbly, 
reverently, resolutely, hopefully, think for 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 5 I 

ourselves, in that region of truth which 
his mission opens before us. 

Thus came into being the Christian doc- 
trine ; and we see at once that it was 
formed from two sources. First came the 
great contribution of the one Lord himself, 
the truth that his people had from him. 
Then was added the contribution of Chris- 
tian men who saw light in his light, and 
had visions of the truth of God through 
his illumination. Christianity began its 
course rich with the treasure of the Mas- 
ter's utterances, and grew yet richer as it 
went on, — strange yet glorious to say, — 
through the diligent and inspired thought 
of holy men, moved by the Holy Spirit, 
devoted to the things of God. Both these 
parts of the primeval doctrine were gath- 
ered into the New Testament, which with 
its immeasurable wealth of living truth is 
the noble fruit of Christ's presence in the 
world. 

But do not fail to notice how the Chris- 



52 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

tian doctrine came into existence. Do not 
imagine that it came by being formulated 
some fine day by the decree of some great 
council, or by the command or endorsement 
of authorized men. The teaching of Jesus 
did not grow into doctrine by being writ- 
ten out and formulated, or by being dis- 
cussed and officially interpreted. Not all 
that his apostles said or wrote entered into 
the substance of the Christian doctrine, 
nor all that Jesus himself said, either. 
Doctrine was no such formal, external 
thing as to take up something merely be- 
cause it had been said, even though it 
were by the Lord himself. No, doctrine 
grew as a vital thing, and grew in the soil 
of life. The Christian doctrine sprang 
up in the experience of Christian living. 
It was the Christian truth as learned 
by the Christian people ; and both ele- 
ments, the truth and the experience, were 
essential to the producing of it. Any 
thought that did not take root in this vital 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 53 

soil, and take root to stay and live, did not 
come to form a part of the Christian doc- 
trine. The process was simply a vital 
process of assimilation. Jesus appeared 
among men, and poured out spiritual 
truth in great abundance. He poured 
it out by what he said, by what he did, 
and by what he was. Words, deeds, 
and personality all preached : life, death, 
and resurrection all uttered living and 
powerful truth. This rich and various 
utterance that Jesus made fell into the 
hearing and the hearts of men and women 
who became the Christian people. Into 
the very being of these men and women 
this truth entered, with transforming 
power, and a new life sprang up in them. 
By and by it came to pass that this truth 
from Jesus had filtered through their 
minds and hearts and life, and come forth 
to expression on the other side. It is this 
second expression, this reproduction, this 
lived-over substance, of the truth that 



54 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

Jesus brought, that constitutes the Chris- 
tian doctrine. Nothing properly belongs to 
the Christian doctrine that has not passed 
through this process. Not until the Chris- 
tian people have made the Christian truth 
their own and given it form from their own 
experience, does there come to be a Chris- 
tian doctrine. The contribution of Jesus to 
mankind became doctrine in his church by 
passing through the experience to which it 
gave rise in men, and coming out in the 
form which that experience gave to it. 

Have I made plain how the Christian 
doctrine came into existence ? Is it clear 
that the truth that Jesus gave became 
Christian doctrine through the medium of 
the Christian people and their life ? Then 
it is time to inquire what the contents of 
this original Christian doctrine are. What 
was the doctrine, or the experienced, real- 
ized, and re-uttered truth, with which 
Christianity began its course ? 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 55 

Here I know that I touch disputed 
ground, possibly dangerous ground. There 
are many opinions as to what the doctrinal 
stock of the first Christianity was. We 
are all tempted to count our own doctrines 
in, and assume that our own form of 
Christianity is the original. But I think 
we can reach some reasonably satisfactory 
answer to the question that has just been 
asked. If we are careful to keep the ques- 
tion in the form that has now been given 
to it, I think it can be answered. This is 
the form : — What truths do we find, that 
came forth from Jesus, and filtered through 
the life and experience of the early Chris- 
tian people, into expression in Christian 
doctrine ? Certainly there are five great 
truths that stand thus related to Christ 
and to the experience of his followers. 
Perhaps there are more : we will judge 
when we have looked at these. All of 
these five truths we find uttered by the 
Master, and uttered again in later time 



56 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

by the disciples as truths now known to 
them in actual experience. 

1. The relation between man and God 
which Jesus presented as the right relation 
has come to be experienced, and enters 
into the doctrine. Jesus the Master said, 
" When ye pray, say, Our Father who art 
in heaven." Paul the disciple said, out of 
the common experience, "We have not 
received the spirit of bondage, again unto 
fear, but we have received the spirit of 
adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." 
The truth, proclaimed by Jesus, that man 
may enter into filial and family relations 
with the good and holy God, has now been 
experienced by the Christian people, and 
has come forth from their glad filial life at 
home with God, into permanent expres- 
sion. The Christian people have found 
the secret of life, in finding themselves 
sons to God. This experienced relation is 
the fundamental element in the Christian 
life, and in the Christian doctrine. No 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 57 

one title represents the whole idea, but at 
the centre it is a doctrine of the Father- 
hood of God. 

2. The significance of the coming and 
work of Jesus himself has been learned by 
experience, and enters into the doctrine. 
The Master said, " Come unto me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will 
give you rest." The disciple, speaking 
out of the common experience, said, 
"Being justified by faith, we have peace 
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 
through whom we have had our access by 
faith into this grace wherein we stand." 
To the early church, Christ is the way, 
and the truth, and the life. He has laid 
down his life for the sheep as the true and 
faithful shepherd : he is the Saviour of 
men, able to save them to the uttermost 
who come unto God by him. His place is 
that of the restorer, the bringer of men 
home to God, the one in whom we have 
our spiritual life and welfare. This rela- 



58 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

■ ■■- --■ .-. - . ■ — ■ ii 

tion between Christ and men is not a 
theoretical one, bnt an actual : it is experi- 
enced, it is known in the life. Through 
the Christian experience has come forth 
in vital power the doctrine of the Saviour- 
hood of Jesus Christ. 

3. The Spirit whom Jesus promised has 
been experienced as a present reality, and 
this reality has entered into doctrine. 
Jesus said, " I will send you another 
Helper, that he may abide with you for- 
ever, even the Spirit of truth." Paul 
responds, out of the common experience, 
" The Spirit himself bears witness with 
our spirit, that we are children of God. 
As many as are led by the Spirit of God, 
they are God's sons." The gift of the 
indwelling divine has become a real gift, 
blessedly known in inward experience, and 
proved by its fruits. There is an indwel- 
ling divine which is the inspiration of 
faith and hope and love to the Christian 
people, and the fruit of the Spirit is found 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 59 

in all the holy graces. The Christian 
experience has created the doctrine of the 
reality and the Friendhood of the Spirit. 

4. The relation between man and man 
which Jesus presented as the right one is 
a relation of love : this relation has begun 
to be realized, and enters into doctrine. 
Jesus said, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself." Paul answered, 
" Now abideth faith, hope, love, these 
three ; and the greatest of these is love " : 
and John, " Let us love one another, for 
God is love." Fellowship is the sweet 
bond of a living unity among those who 
have learned of Jesus, and helpfulness is 
the Christian badge. Experience has made 
a doctrine of the Supremacy of Love. 

5. The high ethical demand of Jesus is 
beginning to be fulfilled in the life of the 
Christian people, because here is a power 
that can fulfil it ; and the attainableness of 
moral victory has entered into doctrine. 



60 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

Jesus the Master said, commanding and 
promising at once, " Ye shall be perfect, 
even as your Father in heaven is perfect." 
Paul the disciple replies, " The law of the 
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has delivered 
me from the law of sin and death." " The 
fruit of the light is in all goodness and 
righteousness and truth." In Christ good 
men are made. He required goodness, 
after the pattern and inspiration of the 
eternal good, and he brings it to pass, 
by the strong holy operation of the in- 
dwelling Spirit. In the Christian holi- 
ness, imperfect though it is, that goodness 
which Christ required and promised is 
actually emerging in the world. Promises 
to " him that overcometh " will in due 
time be claimed. What should enter into 
doctrine if not this? Experience has 
taught the church to hold with joy the 
doctrine of the Transforming Power. 

All this, I am sure, is true. Here are 
five great realities that had come from 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 6 1 

Christ into experience, and come from 
experience to be assured possessions of 
the Christian people. Five great realities : 
the Fatherhood of God, the Saviourhood 
of Jesus Christ, the Friendhood of the 
Spirit, the Supremacy of Love, and the 
Transforming Power. The assertion of 
these realities forms the main stock of 
doctrine in the early Christianity. I doubt 
whether there were any other truths that 
deserve to rank with these, though doubt- 
less there are other truths implied in these. 
If there is any other that ranks with these, 
it is the sublime affirmation of immortality. 
This was not exactly a truth made known 
by Jesus, or a possession peculiar to his 
followers. Yet it was one of their posses- 
sions, gained as their own in fresh fulness 
and power in their experience with him. 
One element in that inspiring Christian 
life which made existence new to so many 
of the poor and unfortunate of this world 
was the exhilaration that came with the 



62 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

sense of deathlessness. Men now expected 
to live forever, continuing in Christ him- 
self, and with him, that life in which they 
were now most blessed : and who can 
wonder that the world was new ? But I 
think the sense of immortality came rather 
as a conclusion or corollary from the Chris- 
tian doctrine than as a primary part of it ; 
and I think that the Christian doctrine 
itself, denned as that which came from 
Christ by way of experience, and was held 
and proclaimed as the characteristic truth 
of Christianity, consisted chiefly in the 
affirmation of these five great realities as 
realities, namely, — the Fatherhood of 
God and the filial life with him ; the 
Saviourhood of Jesus Christ by whom we 
have been brought home to God; the 
Friendhood of the Spirit who dwells in 
us ; the Supremacy of Love as the law 
of life and duty; and the Transforming 
Power of the divine grace, whereby God 
is able to do exceeding abundantly above 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 63 

all that we ask or think, in the production 
of real goodness, according to the power 
that is at work in us already. 

Now we turn to another part of our 
subject. From this glorious body of doc- 
trine, or of truth experienced, began the 
long history of the Christian doctrine, con- 
tinuing till now. About this I must say 
two or three things, important to the 
present purpose. 

I need not show that the history of 
Christian doctrine will be a history of 
divine realities, handled by human thought. 
Here again, the divine seed is cast forth 
into the field of the world, to be received 
as it may by the soil that awaits it and 
the influences that are around. Human 
thought deals with the divine realities as 
it can. God's truth takes its chances of 
being fairly or unfairly considered, wisely 
or unwisely interpreted, rightly or wrongly 
grouped. The result must be a mixed re- 



64 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

suit, noble but imperfect. Any one who 
expects the Christian doctrine at any given 
time to be wholly clear, consistent, and 
harmonious with the mind of God, has 
not considered the whole case. When 
divine realities are handled by human 
thought, we can predict a mixed result, 
noble but imperfect, and imperfect in a 
multitude of ways. 

See how variation comes in. There is 
an open door for it at once, and in it 
comes. The open door for variation is 
explanation. The great primary element 
in the doctrine is not explanation, or 
theory, but assertion, the assertion of the 
reality. The church proclaims that God 
is our Father, that Christ is our Saviour, 
that the Spirit is the indwelling Friend, 
that love is the law of life, that victory is 
possible. The strength and vigor of the 
doctrine lies in the confident holding and 
affirmation of these realities. As long as 
the Christian people are firmly holding 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 6$ 

these things for true, so long is the doc- 
trine a living and glowing thing, compe- 
tent to win its way by inherent energy. 
But it seems inevitable that efforts should 
be made to explain these great realities, 
to account for them to the judgment of 
man, to tell just how and why they are 
true. No one can say that this tendency 
is wrong. The things of God are infi- 
nitely worthy of the thought of man, and 
it is a high human glory to gaze into them 
and seek to understand. But who does 
not see that variety of views will come 
in, as soon as the effort to explain is 
made ? Minds, tempers, training, degrees 
of sympathy, opportunities to know, abili- 
ties for understanding, power of expres- 
sion, all differ, and variation in doctrine 
is inevitable, when once the enterprise 
of explanation has been launched. 

All the more because of another ten- 
dency, namely, the tendency to regard the 

explanation that is reached as part and 

5 



66 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

parcel of the doctrine itself, thenceforth 
inseparable from it. By virtue of this 
tendency, with which we are all familiar, 
every inquirer as to the how and the 
wherefore of the divine realities becomes 
himself a contributor to the substance of 
the doctrine. The legislature makes the 
law, but the court interprets it ; and the 
court's interpretation is accepted as part 
and parcel of the law. So, given the di- 
vine reality, fascinating in its mysterious- 
ness, and the explanation or theory of it 
that is accepted becomes attached to the 
reality as a part of it. The theory may 
be good or bad, wise or foolish, it makes 
no difference. The holder of the theory 
calls it the doctrine, always, and to him 
the two are one. But when there are 
many inquirers, all fascinated by the glory 
of God in his truth, and all sincerely ex- 
plaining its mysteries as best they may, 
variation in doctrine needs not to be an- 
nounced, for it will come, welcome or un- 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 6j 

welcome, and will come to stay. If my 
neighbor and I, believing, for example, in 
the transforming power and the victorious 
holiness, investigate the mode and means 
of the victory, and he reaches one concep- 
tion and I another, then to each of us the 
doctrine will consist of the great reality 
plus his own explanation of it, and there 
will be two doctrines of holiness, one his 
and one mine. 

I do not think for a moment that this 
process can be avoided. This is a part of 
that inevitable to which divine realities 
submit themselves when they are handled 
by human thought. I am simply calling 
attention to the inevitableness of variation 
in' Christian doctrine, and of the entrance 
of inferior forms of doctrine by the side of 
better forms. Judgments that are partial, 
one-sided, temporary, provisional, are cer- 
tain to be formed, and for the time to be 
held tenaciously as the only true : but with 
the lapse of time men will be called to 



68 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

abandon them, however reluctantly, in 
favor of other views that are truer, even 
though these in turn are still imperfect. 
All this is inevitable, when divine realities 
are handled by human thought. There was 
no way to keep Christian doctrine from 
variation, except to keep thought away 
from it ; and that is not God's way with 
his creatures. So we must not be scanda- 
lized if we find the Christian doctrine 
changing its forms, and seeming some- 
times contradictory and inconsistent with 
itself ; nor should we be too superior if 
we watch this process from the point of 
view of science. It is the common lot. 
The Christian truth has fared as all other 
truth has fared, when human thought dealt 
with it. 

If we wish to understand the Christian 
doctrine, there is another aspect of its 
history for us to consider. It is important 
that we notice through what influences 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 69 

the doctrine of the early past has come 
down to the present. I have spoken of 
the certainty of variation and conflicting 
forms : a few words now about the influ- 
ences through which the course of the 
history of the Christian doctrine has run. 
Three great influences have touched the 
doctrine, modifying it for good and for 
evil. 

The first was philosophy. It was Greek 
philosophy that first laid its hand upon 
the Christian doctrine. The philosopher 
gained a standing among the exponents of 
the faith and the interpreters of the doc- 
trine, and kept his standing long. It 
could not have been otherwise, and it is 
vain to wish it might have been otherwise. 
The period of philosophy was a normal 
and worthy stage in the life of Chris- 
tianity, and needful help was given by 
philosophy at a time when nothing else 
would do. But Dr. Edwin Hatch was 
right when he called attention to the deep 



7<3 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

contrast between the Sermon on the Mount 
and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on 
the Mount is direct, simple, practical, 
religious : the Nicene Creed is metaphys- 
ical, abstract, inferential, non-ethical, 
theological. One sprang from the mind 
and heart of Jesus Christ, the other from 
theological inquiry and controversy among 
his followers. One was intended to set 
forth the living truth concerning God and 
man : the other, to guard the truth that 
had been accepted, and shut out those who 
could not join in reciting this statement of 
it. The contrast is both sharp and deep, 
and there are many other illustrations as 
clear and keen as this. 

The effect of philosophy upon the Chris- 
tian doctrine, as this illustration shows, 
was to elaborate it. That process of iden- 
tifying the interpretation with the doc- 
trine, of which we spoke, had now its 
apotheosis. Metaphysical discussion took 
hold upon implied points, and brought 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE J I 

them to the surface, and set them at the 
front. It called attention to implied con- 
nections of thought, and insisted upon 
filling out a consistent statement of the 
underlying assumptions. In this way it 
added to the points of doctrine. It mul- 
tiplied largely the matters which it was 
held important to believe. We may 
almost say that philosophy took a simple 
faith, and left an elaborate system of 
belief. It added to the bulk of doctrine, 
but not to its vitality or working vigor. 
Thus the doctrine passed through a period 
of large elaboration in the schools of 
thought : and the effect still remains upon 
it. The simplest Christian of to-day in- 
herits, in the teaching that he receives, 
something from the Greek philosophy. 

Next comes organization. After the 
Roman empire had fallen, there rose the 
new Roman empire, the imperial church. 
The church as an institution now obtained 
standing, not only as an exponent of the 



72 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 



faith and an interpreter of the doctrine, 
but by and by as the sole exponent and 
interpreter. There was now a great gov- 
ernmental system, in which the sacrament- 
working element was the dominant force. 
Sacramentalism and governmentalism go 
naturally together: and in the middle 
ages all influences conspired to hold the 
church in the rank and place of authority 
in the field of doctrine. There was now 
an organization that claimed the right to 
guide the doctrine, and finally the right to 
determine it, by authority from above. 

The effect of organization upon the 
Christian doctrine was to formalize it. 
Inheriting much from the metaphysical 
period that preceded, the church went on 
to build the doctrine into a scholastic 
system, philosophy and organization now 
conspiring to introduce method and com- 
pleteness as the type-giving idea. Out of 
the sacramental system, too, grew a regu- 
lar system of straightforward doctrine, set- 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 73 

ting forth the authority of the church and 
the way of salvation through the churchly 
ministries. The vast weight of organiza- 
tion was a burden upon the doctrine of 
Christianity, as well as upon the Christian 
life : flexibility was discouraged, rigidity 
was favored, by the existing conditions. 
The system has grown, until the head of 
the organization stands as the infallible 
teacher, and the doctrine is solely as he 
proclaims or sanctions it. Organization 
has been the formalizer of doctrine. In 
the love for system and the leaning on 
authority, all our modern theology inherits 
something from the great formalizing 
organization of the middle ages. 

Last of the three stands individualism. 
In the modern age, from the sixteenth 
century on, Christianity has had to do 
with the intense individualism that has 
given character to the west. The Refor- 
mation of the sixteenth century was the 
blossoming-out of individualism, the emerg- 



74 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

ing of personal freedom and responsibility 
from beneath the chnrchly sway, the estab- 
lishing of free and active thought as the 
method and activity of the age. In our 
part of the world, Christianity has been 
under this influence now for four cen- 
turies. 

I am at a loss for a single word to de- 
scribe the effect of the modern individual- 
ism upon the Christian doctrine, and yet 
the effect is plain enough. In the age of 
individualism the interest in the bringing- 
out of doctrine has certainly increased, 
and the doctrine has grown sharp and 
intense. The individualizing impulse is 
full of life : it imparts freshness, courage, 
vigor, hopefulness, to all intellectual en- 
deavor. The impulse of the Reformation 
has stimulated the investigation of Chris- 
tian truth, and thrown abundant life into 
the study of the doctrine. But it has also 
led to division and variety, beyond all pre- 
cedent. It has differentiated and diversi- 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 75 

fied doctrine, and scattered it, and broken 
it into fragments. Why not ? When we 
are all free to think, and all do think, 
each one just as he is, with his own outfit 
of powers and training, how can all think 
alike ? If we interpret the Christian real- 
ities each in his own way, we shall differ 
in our results. And if, as the case has 
been, our individualism takes form in a 
host of organizations, each deeming itself 
set for the defence of some view of the 
doctrine, then all the more certainly will 
the doctrine be diversified and scattered 
into portions. Still more will this come 
to pass when the age of individualism 
inherits from the methods of philosophy 
and the habits of a scholastic period. The 
church of Rome is right when it tells 
us that our Protestantism does not tend 
to intellectual agreement. The more seri- 
ous and interesting the matters that we 
inquire about, the less likely are we to 
reach identity in the result. The modern 



y6 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

individualism has added immensely to the 
energy of thought upon the Christian doc- 
trine, but not as yet has it brought unity 
in conclusions : nor will it bring such 
unity, except by the aid of more spiritual 
influences. It has been a quickener of 
doctrine, but a divider also. 

I have spoken long enough of the road 
over which the Christian doctrine has 
come down to us from its far beginnings. 
Divine reality, thrown into the living ex- 
perience of the Christian people, has been 
to them the theme of thought. The actual 
reality has been largely the same to them 
all, but difference and variety in views of 
it have followed, by an absolute necessity. 
The doctrine has been elaborated by phil- 
osophy, formalized by organization, and 
quickened but diversified by individual- 
ism, and at last, out of the long process, it 
has come down to us, and stands before us 

to be estimated as to its value. .What is 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE J J 

its present worth? How well and justly 
does it represent those divine realities 
with which it started ? Can we point to it 
as helpful to the purpose of our apolo- 
getics? Is it worthy to stand as a com- 
mendation of Christianity? Is it a real 
help in our presentation of our religion to 
the world? Wherein does it need im- 
provement? and can we do anything to 
add to its quality and power? All these 
questions we have a right to ask, and to 
them we desire a true answer. 

That Christian doctrine concerning 
which we now make these inquiries is of 
course the resultant from all the past. 
We inherit from all our predecessors. On 
every point of doctrinal belief, the popular 
thought of to-day inherits more or less 
from all past theories and interpretations. 
Our present Christian doctrine contains 
the old and ever new divine realities, and 
it contains the many and various results 
of the handling of them by human thought. 



j8 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

All together these elements, various and 
incongruous, have come down to us. It 
could not be otherwise, and it is vain for 
us to imagine that it has been otherwise. 
We have not merely what our Master 
taught, but what the mighty past has 
given us. 

This statement sounds to some, I doubt 
not, as if I felt constrained chiefly to 
acknowledge the faults of the process, and 
to confess the defilements that have come 
from the touch of man upon the divine 
realities. But it is not so. I do not feel 
constrained to set the faults in any such 
rank. I see a wonder on the other side. 
The first thing that I have to say about 
the present Christian doctrine is that the 
divine realities are still here. They have 
come down to us. They live, and have 
their power. The realities that composed 
the Christian doctrine at the beginning 
compose it now. All the explaining and 
difference and* variation, all the elaborating 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 79 

by philosophy and formalizing by churchly 
organization and scattering by modern 
thought, has not destroyed them as the 
treasure of the Christian people. Still do 
these same divine realities hold their place 
as the centre and substance of the Chris- 
tian doctrine. 

Do you say that I cannot prove it ? It is 
true that it is not a matter for demonstra- 
tion, but it is a matter for affirmation that 
cannot be successfully challenged. If I 
were asked as an observer of my own time 
what are the essential elements in the 
Christian doctrine as it now exists, what 
should I say? What ought I to say? 
What would any well-informed man say ? 
I should say that first of all it is held by 
the Christian people that in Christ the 
true and right relation between man and 
God, the relation of children with their 
father, is realized. I should say that the 
Christians still claim to be living in son- 
ship to God, according to the teaching of 



80 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

Jesus, and that this experience is their 
glory. I should even say that the fulness 
of the meaning of God's fatherhood is now 
dawning with unprecedented power upon 
the Christian people. I should say next, 
that Christians hold unshakenly to the 
Saviourhood of Jesus Christ. He it is 
that has brought them home to God and 
introduced them to that filial life in which 
they rest and are strong. In his wonderful 
mission and life, culminating in his wonder- 
ful death so rich in sacrifice, the Christian 
people find the way of their salvation. I 
should say further that the Christian 
people experience and acknowledge the 
Friendhood of the holy indwelling Spirit. 
They still declare their experience and 
belief of a present God, a God within 
them, renewing, transforming, strengthen- 
ing, fulfilling in actual life the saving pur- 
pose of Jesus Christ. I should say that 
the Christians hold, though all of them 
imperfectly, to, the supremacy of love as 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 8 1 

the ruling and decisive element in all true 
character. The experimental presence and 
possession of a noble and self-forgetful 
love is nothing unknown, or even rare, 
among the Christian people, and the ideal 
of excellence among them is the character 
that is crowned by love in its purest and 
sweetest forms. And I should affirm that 
the Christian people hold that in Christ 
there is a genuine transforming power, a 
power of God unto salvation, able to pro- 
duce a successful holiness. They believe 
that through Christ it is possible for men 
to be cleansed of their actual evil, not 
merely in some theoretical and suppositi- 
tious way, but really and forever, and 
brought to actual and positive holiness in 
the sight of God. And if the affirmation 
of immortality be considered an essential 
part of the Christian doctrine, then I 
should add that the present Christian peo- 
ple hold to immortality as their human 
birthright and their Christian inheritance, 

6 



82 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

and live in the light of the immortal 
hope. 

Here are all the essential realities of the 
primitive Christian doctrine ; and I affirm 
that they are held as facts of life and ex- 
perience now, and proclaimed as present 
doctrine. After all the centuries they are 
here, in vitality and power, holding the 
place in the church that they held at first. 
They constitute the doctrine, too, not of 
some small part of the Christian people, 
but of the mass. I have not recited the 
creed of some sect, I have uttered the doc- 
trine of Christendom. I have spoken the 
ecumenical creed. 

After what has been said, no one will 
suppose that I am claiming for this primi- 
tive and ecumenical doctrine a perfect, an 
ideal, a satisfactory hold upon the Chris- 
tian people. Most freely do I confess to 
serious imperfections in the holding of this 
noble sum of Christian doctrine. What 
would you expect ? Have not the divine 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 83 

realities come clown, through ages of 
human handling, to the hands of a genera- 
tion as imperfect as any of its predeces- 
sors ? Defects ? Certainly, they are here. 
The most exacting parts of the doctrine 
are held least satisfactorily, as the}^ always 
have been. The Christian people are still 
too unwilling to let their doctrine have its 
way with their lives, and exercise upon 
them its searching and cleansing power. 
They still have much to learn as to the 
simplicity, the meaning, and the vitality 
of what they believe. Nowhere, either, is 
the whole equally well believed and illus- 
trated ; for one side is seen and received 
more clearly in one quarter and another 
in another, even as it has always been. 
Moreover, in the long course of transmis- 
sion the doctrine has become far too vari- 
ous and far too complicated. Around each 
one of the great divine realities there has 
gathered a mass of differing and conflict- 
ing interpretations ; and still the practice 



84 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

persists of confounding these interpreta- 
tions with the divine reality itself. Thus 
the people's minds are burdened with a 
superfluous mass of what they sincerely 
believe to be Christian doctrine, but of 
what belongs outside the central field and 
ought to be separated from the essential 
matter. There often appears to be deep 
and irreconcilable conflict between those 
who hold the reality in common ; yet the 
conflict relates to the explanation of the 
reality, not to the reality itself. There is 
great need of learning to distinguish be- 
tween the realities that the Christian doc- 
trine affirms and the explanations of them 
in which the history of doctrine abounds. 
All these things, and doubtless more, must 
be acknowledged by way of defect in the 
holding of the Christian doctrine by the 
Christian people of to-day. Nevertheless, 
when all the defects have been freely ad- 
mitted, I still affirm that the great divine 
realities that made up the Christian doc- 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 85 

trine in the beginning make up the Chris- 
tian doctrine now. I declare that the 
Christian people throughout the world are 
believing in the Fatherhood of God, the 
Saviourhood of Jesus Christ, the Friend- 
hood of the Spirit, the supremacy of love, 
and the reality of the transforming power 
of the divine grace. They diverge widely 
in their explanation of these facts, and in 
the views that they associate with them ; 
they differ widely in the forms of expe- 
rience to which these facts give rise ; but 
in the facts themselves they all believe, and 
it is this belief that makes them Christians. 
And this presence in the world of the 
original body of Christian doctrine, exist- 
ing still not in theory alone but in experi- 
ence as an inspiring and renewing force, 
I hail with joy as a proof of the presence 
of God in the history of mankind. 

I am well aware that there are many 
who make little account of the presence 



86 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

of this body of central doctrine. From 
two quarters I may be criticised for setting 
it forth as so important a thing. An 
objector, from without the Christian circle, 
may say, " Ah, but this is not Christianity. 
Historically, Christianity includes a thou- 
sand varieties, so many and so mutually 
contradictory that one cannot even deter- 
mine what it claims to be. You may find 
a few peculiarities in common, as you are 
doing now, but that is of no consequence. 
The historical Christian doctrine is a far 
more complex and difficult thing than this, 
and it is not a fact that the whole can be 
gathered up into a few statements." And 
some earnest soul within the Christian 
circle may perhaps unwittingly join hands 
with the objector from without, when he 
hears so short a creed pronounced, and one 
that does not contain some theories or 
explanations that seem to him to be of the 
first importance. " Of what avail," he 
may say, " is the common acceptance of 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 8? 

a few mere central facts, when almost all 
who are said to accept them are wrong in 
their understanding of them ? Agreement 
on facts that are variously understood is 
only the shadow of agreement. The sub- 
stance of agreement lies in the understand- 
ing of the facts, and unity in this is 
wanting. So what is the use of proclaim- 
ing as ecumenical doctrine a body of 
realities that all interpret differently, and 
the most misinterpret? " 

But I think I have been right in my 
statement of what the Christian doctrine 
really is, namely, that it consists in divine 
realities handled by human thought. This 
ought to dispose of the first objection. If 
this is true, the objector ought not to be 
asking that we take all the variations of 
doctrine into the common stock and insist 
upon holding them all as a part of our 
present Christianity. It is somewhat like 
asking that the present science of physics 
or chemistry should include all the theories 



88 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

of past days, or that philosophy herself 
should muster her dead along with her 
living, and defend the views of her former 
magnates as adequate to the present time. 
Let us have sense. If we have the origi- 
nal and abiding realities of the Christian 
faith held to-day as Christian doctrine, we 
have what all our fathers have had, in 
every generation; and if we interpret 
them variously among ourselves and differ 
in our conception of them, we do what all 
our fathers did, and what all our children 
must do, as long as it is the nature of man 
to know in part. Christianity consisted at 
first in certain great abiding facts of 
spiritual life and experience. It consists 
now in the same. There have been a 
thousand thoughts and theories about it, 
that enter into the history of it but form 
no permanent part of it, and we are by no 
means bound to reckon them all in when 
we wish to know what the Christian doc- 
trine really is. And the same answer may 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 89 

serve when we meet the objection that 
comes from within the Christian circle. 
It is not necessary for me to find my 
theory of the manner of the Saviourhood 
of Christ, for example, accepted in the 
universal thought of Christendom, in order 
for me to perceive, and to rejoice, that all 
Christendom believes in the Saviourhood 
of Christ. My theory of that great reality 
is the best that I can form at present, but 
it certainly is not faultless. If my theory 
of the Saviourhood of Christ must be 
accepted in order for men to be saved, 
most Christians would be lost, for the 
most have not accepted it. What is true 
of my theory is true of yours, whatever it 
may be. There is no one explanation of 
that great reality upon which most of those 
who have trusted in Christ for salvation 
have agreed. So great a fact is sure to 
have its many interpretations, differing as 
minds differ ; and those who find eternal 
life in the Saviourhood of Christ may well 



90 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

rejoice that those who understand it differ- 
ently from them find eternal life in it too. 
We are all pupils in the school of Christ, 
handling divine realities in human thought 
that is half- trained and half -sanctified at 
the best, and our interpretations are like 
those of our fathers, neither full nor final. 
And so we are confirmed in thinking that 
the great experimental realities of Chris- 
tianity provide the genuine abiding ele- 
ments in the Christian doctrine. Through 
these comes the life in which Christianity 
consisted at first and consists always. 
And these central verities do certainly 
form the heart of the universal Christian 
doctrine as it is held to-day. They are 
now experienced, and now proclaimed as 
verities that Christ brought near and 
experience has confirmed. 

Of the now-existing Christian doctrine, 
therefore, I am by no means ashamed. I 
am not here to apologize for it. It is the 
most precious of the products of the past. 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 9 1 

In the mission of Christ, God sent it forth 
into the world, and the long movement of 
history has borne it on to us. I wish that 
it were better understood in its simplicity; 
I wish that preachers might learn to dis- 
tinguish between it and what surrounds 
it ; I wish that it were held by the Chris- 
tian people with better conviction and 
more faithful obedience to its supreme 
demands. There are conceptions and pre- 
sentations of it for which I might be con- 
strained to apologize, if the occasion arose. 
But of the Christian doctrine itself I am 
not ashamed, and for it I have no apologies 
to offer. It was a great gift of God at 
first, and it remains a great and worthy 
gift of God to-day. If those who hold it 
can but walk worthy of it, and commend 
it to general confidence by their proclama- 
tion of its truths, the whole world will 
have reason to thank God for it as a pres- 
ent gift of blessing. 



92 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

What can we do for the Christian doc- 
trine, we may ask, to render it more effec- 
tive in the present world ? What can be 
done for it must be done mainly through 
the Christian people ; and the need of the 
Christian people with reference to their 
doctrine lies just where our present course 
of thought is leading us. The exceeding 
preciousness and the supreme value of this 
central body of experimental truth, — this 
is what the Christian people need to learn. 
The permanent element in the doctrine 
consists in the declaration of the great 
experimental truths : the changing and 
passing element consists in the various 
interpretations of those truths, made from 
time to time in human thought. We are 
so devoted to the interpretations that we 
often lose our sense of the vitality of the 
facts. We need to be called back to the 
realities, where the power dwells. I well 
remember how like a cobweb-brushing 
breeze a statement of the late Robert 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 93 

William Dale many years ago swept 
through my mind. It stood at the front 
of a treatise of his upon the Atonement, 
which I was beginning to read. " It is not 
the doctrine of the death of Christ that 
atones for human sin, but the death itself." 
That power resides in a reality, and not in 
any doctrine of a reality, — this, it would 
seem, I might have known before, so sim- 
ple is it, and so obviously true. We need 
to see it concerning the whole body of 
Christian doctrine. Theories and explana- 
tions of the great realities we must form, 
and hold, always hoping to correct and 
enrich them as we go on. No one is 
asking us to lay them down and leave 
them, for that to most of us is impossible. 
But it is in the good God our Father, not 
in any doctrine of his Fatherhood, that we 
have our filial life at home with him. It 
is by our living Saviour Jesus Christ that 
we are brought home to God, not through 
some doctrine of him, or some doctrine of 



94 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

the manner of his Saviourhood. It is the 
indwelling Spirit himself that helps our 
weakness, and we are strengthened by his 
real touch, not by a doctrine of the Spirit, 
or of his personality, or of his relations 
in the Godhead. It is by love, and not 
by a doctrine of love, that we are to prove 
ourselves Christians. The experience of 
the transforming power is what we want, 
and without this ever so good a theory of 
the transforming power is powerless. If 
we attain to such a view of the Christian 
doctrine as this, we can declare that the 
great realities are quick and powerful now, 
as confidently and strongly as could the 
apostles themselves when the faith was 
new. 

I count upon two helps toward a better 
conception of the Christian doctrine. I 
expect valuable help from the clear and 
straightforward thinking that is character- 
istic of the best intellectual work of our 
time. It is necessary that the Christian 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 95 

people learn to distinguish things that 
differ, and thus get their doctrine clear of 
complication with what does not belong to 
it. In this they need to learn from such 
intellectual work as is done in this uni- 
versity, and wherever men set themselves 
to the task of clear thinking and discern- 
ment of things as they are. Help us, I 
say to-day as I said yesterday. Go on 
with clear thinking. Establish the right 
way of mental work as the only way that 
shall be welcome anywhere. Illustrate 
sound, strong thinking for us, until it shall 
be a matter of course that we must make 
it our own. Make it impossible for us to 
live thinking confusedly and incorrectly. 
Every advance in good intellectual practice 
helps Christian doctrine toward the day of 
disentanglement and independence. It 
leads on toward the time when the Chris- 
tian realities shall be distinguished in all 
minds from theories concerning them, and 
the power of the divine reality can go forth 



g6 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 

in its simplicity to influence minds pre- 
pared to receive it. 

The other help that I count upon can 
come only from within the Christian peo- 
ple. There is nothing but religious life 
that can most powerfully strengthen the 
cause of religion in the world. It is life 
that begets life. Only the genuine experi- 
ence of the divine grace and life, — such 
experience as the first Christians had, and 
all the best of their successors, — only this 
can bring the help that is most needful. 
But I see it coming. Already, in our own 
time, we find a fresh insistence upon gen- 
uineness and reality in religion. Words 
are powerless by themselves, preaching 
that rings hollow is unwelcome, phrases 
empty of life do not convince, churches 
are blamed for professions that do not rule 
the life. The demand for genuineness 
thus far appears largely in negative form, 
clearing away the ungenuine ; and to many 
it seems dangerous and destructive. But 



THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE g? 

it will not continue to be negative. It is 
a hopeful beginning for a deeper experi- 
ence of the great realities of the Chris- 
tian faith. A generation that insists upon 
tearing down the false will not be content 
until the true has been built up in its 
place. The experience of God, of Christ, 
of the Spirit, of love, and of victory is 
coming in. It will take new forms, but it 
will be the old reality, and the Christian 
doctrine will stand forth strong and clear, 
— clear in the light of simplicity, and 
strong in the strength of God. 



Ill 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

If we have a people and a doctrine, what 
more do we want to make up our Chris- 
tianity? A set of ideas satisfactory and 
inspiring, and a multitude of people de- 
voted to them, — is not this enough ? 
Many suppose, or assume, that this will 
account for it all. When we have seen 
these two elements, and acknowledged 
them, have we not seen all that there 
is of it? But we have something more. 
Our discernment of the real nature of 
Christianity is not complete till we have 
apprehended and in some degree under- 
stood the Christian Power. 

The Christian power is not a late-coming 
element. We see it from the first. We 
perceive it at work in the very production 
of the Christian people and the Christian 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 99 

doctrine. There was an initial power, that 
brought forth these two great facts in the 
world, and this power we can trace with- 
out difficulty. It began, as we know, in 
the Master, Jesus himself, and the quali- 
ties by which he made his impression. He 
drew to himself the first disciples, by the 
joint influence of his marvellous person- 
ality and the high, helpful, and inspiring 
truth that he offered them. Virtue went 
forth from him, upon such as could receive 
it. His " Follow me " was powerful, and 
his instruction was enlightening, uplifting, 
transforming. His time for work was 
very short, and only beginnings were pos- 
sible in his brief lifetime, and yet he left 
behind him in the world a group of human 
beings spiritually changed by the touch of 
his personality, and instructed in the first 
principles of his truth. Thus Jesus be- 
came the creator of the Christian people, 
by the power that was in him. It was a 
personal power, awakening, reproving, con- 



100 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

soling, spiritualizing, opening heaven over 
the earth for men. 

After his departure, there came upon 
his friends a mighty visitation of spiritual 
energy. It was not associated merely with 
their remembrances of his life and words 
among them, but rather with the divine 
surprise that his resurrection brought upon 
them. Now they looked up to him as 
exalted to the right hand of God in 
glory ; and along with this thought of the 
glory that had been given to him there 
came upon them an immense and over- 
whelming influence, an inspiration of the 
divine Spirit, and an energy of faith beyond 
all precedent. The evidence of it is not 
found alone in the narrative of the occur- 
rences of the Day of Pentecost, in the 
Acts of the Apostles. Some think that 
narrative is not historical. But if that 
narrative were not there, the story of the 
early Christianity as a whole would still 
conclusively imply some such experience 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 101 

as is there described, — an enlargement of 
spiritual vision, a quickening of confidence, 
a visitation of power. The history cannot 
be accounted for without the descent of 
the Holy Spirit upon the church. Some- 
how there came in those days an amazing 
outburst of enthusiastic certainty, a rush 
of vigor, a transforming conviction of the 
great realities, by which neophytes became 
heralds and expounders of the faith, and 
a scattered little flock became a strong 
people. Out of this visitation of power 
came, in due time, the missionary impulse, 
and the new faith went out to the wide 
Roman world. Thus it was that the 
power made the people. 

It was through the same experience of 
power that the Christian doctrine was 
born. The doctrine, we may remember, 
was not merely the truth, but the truth 
as the church knew it by experience. It 
consisted in the Christian conceptions after 
they had passed through the medium of 



102 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

the Christian life, and had thus become 
vital possessions of the Christian people. 
Nothing but the immense vitality of the 
experience could have brought the doctrine 
forth as a living thing. "We greatly mis- 
judge if we think the adoption of the 
Christian doctrine was the cool adoption 
of a set of opinions : it was the glowing 
realization of a world of spiritual verities. 
Herein was manifested a tremendous power, 
and Christianity was already signalized in 
the world as a living force of great 
energy. 

The power has continued until now, 
and we have to note that it has wrought 
in the same manner as the other elements 
of Christianity that we have considered. 
It was cast forth into the human world, 
and its operation was affected by its field 
and modified by what it had to work upon. 
It has wrought steadily on, age after age, 
and yet for its results it has been com- 
pelled to bide its time and gain by gradual 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 103 

increments. James Hinton, who had 
ideas of his own about Nature as an ex- 
pression of God, — ideas fine in aesthetic 
quality, searching in moral power, and 
most valuable, as he conceived, for practi- 
cal life, and at the same time thoroughly 
revolutionary, — once estimated the time 
that would have to be allowed for the intro- 
duction of such ideas to full effective appli- 
cation. He put the period at two hundred 
years, with judgment that it would be 
longer rather than shorter. First, the idea 
must be seen in enthusiastic vision by 
some one, and enunciated for the world 
to hear. It must get abroad among men, 
and be somewhat widely considered. It 
must come to be deemed important. Then 
it must be ignored, recognized, restated, 
ridiculed, refuted, denied, doubted, ad- 
mitted, discussed, affirmed, believed, ac- 
cepted, taught to adults, taught to children, 
wrought into literature, put into practice, 
taught to another generation of children, 



104 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

keep in practice, tested by its fruits, al- 
lowed to modify other ideas, embodied in 
institutions ; and in the course of some 
generations it will sink in among the cer- 
tainties that are assumed and acted upon 
without question and without thought. 
For this process two hundred years is a 
short period. This is a fair illustration 
of the kind of world in which Christianity 
was cast abroad as seed upon the field. 
We are often asked, almost triumphantly, 
why Christianity has not accomplished 
more in so very long a time. But there is 
no such thing as long time or short time, 

absolutely. Everything is relative, and 
time is long or short according to what has 
to be accomplished in it. Time that is long 
for one purpose is short for another. Time 
that is long for a national career may be 
short for the lifetime of an idea. No 
deeply significant periods in human his- 
tory are short : all great movements are 
long movements. I have a friend, a geolo- 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 105 

gist, who affirms that every minister ought 
to take a course in historical geology, in 
order to learn something about the length 
of processes, and thus at once enlarge and 
slow down his expectations of divine oper- 
ation among men. Certainly a just per- 
spective in history will tend to cure us of 
much of our hurry, and silence many of 
our cavils. Christianity undertook a moral 
transformation in an evil world. It must 
be judged in the light of slow processes 
and long periods. 

Thinking in this strain, we shall not 
wonder or be scandalized at the great 
reaction that we are often asked to notice, 
at the end of the first age of power, when 
the apostles had departed. That such a 
reaction and decline of energy occurred is 
certain. Yet it was not so much a re- 
action of Christianity, as it was a reaction 
of human nature after its first leap of 
new life. Human kind never puts forth 
exceptional energy without paying for it 



106 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

in reaction, and the vigor of the first 
Christian period was followed by com- 
parative lifelessness in the second. Nor 
can we wonder that when Christianity 
grew up in the larger world, after its 
transplantation, its power seemed ham- 
pered and repressed by its surroundings 
and materials. All this was of the inevi- 
table. Nor, on the other hand, do we 
wonder when we see again and again the 
breaking-forth of genuine and effective 
power in unexpected quarters. This was 
the reassertion of the native quality. The 
history of the Christian power is simply the 
long illustration of these two opposites. 

The history of the Christian power opens 
a field too vast to be entered now. I can- 
not even enumerate at all the works of 
usefulness and help in which that power 
has been manifested. Only the briefest 
statement can now be made, a statement 
of the simple fact that through its history 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER loy 

Cliristianity has shown itself possessed of 
true vitality and vast energy ; that though 
it has been resisted, and its force has been 
diminished, so that it had its days of com- 
parative weakness, it has nevertheless 
proved itself to be animated by a genuine 
and most vital power. This is a common- 
place, and as a commonplace I shall let it 
stand. It ought to be unquestioned. I 
do not believe, let it be said in passing, in 
claiming for Christianity all the good that 
has been done within its field. Extrava- 
gant claims defeat themselves. It is not 
true that to Christianity alone we should 
attribute all the progress of that part of 
the world which it has influenced. Let us 
be fair to other forces in society, and to 
the general movement of God in history. 
Yet Christianity has been a potent factor 
in the great improvement. To its influ- 
ence we can fairly and justly trace large 
gains in the general good. It has sweet- 
ened the universal life, in a thousand 



108 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

ways. It has been influential in the miti- 
gating of cruelties, the abolishing of bar- 
barities, the delivering of the enslaved, 
the lifting-up of the downtrodden, and the 
long movement toward giving to all their 
rights. In spite of its own special entan- 
glements and embarrassments, and the fre- 
quent discrediting of its influence and 
value through the faults of its friends, it has 
done its good work, and abundantly vindi- 
cated itself as a living and beneficent force. 
There are some who are ready to tell us 
that the power that we associate with the 
name of Christ is mainly in the past. 
They admit that he has been great, but 
claim that other lords now hold sway, and 
he is passing into forgetfulness. There 
were different days once, in what we call 
the ages of faith, when men were simpler 
and more easily satisfied. Then Christ 
was influential, and was sufficient to the 
world that then was. But now we demand 
more evidence for what we are to receive, 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 109 

and accept nothing with the ancient readi- 
ness ; and under the new requirements 
Christ fails to be vindicated, and his power 
is gone. But these judges of events are 
strangely astray in their perceptions. The 
truth is that in what we call the ages of 
faith the largeness of the power of Christ 
was scarcely even suspected, still less put 
to the test of life. It is only now that the 
searching and glorious meaning of his 
spiritual power is beginning to be per- 
ceived. It is deep injustice to the present 
age to declare that it is no longer looking 
to Jesus with reverence and sense of de- 
pendence. Our age is not leaving Christ 
out of sight and memory. Its method of 
recognizing his power differs from that of 
other days, and much that has been asso- 
ciated with him may now have lost the 
reverence that once was given to it. But 
if we ask to whom or to what the world 
is looking to-day, in its deepest and most 
earnest heart, for spiritual light and coun- 



1 1 THE CHRISTIAN PO WER 

sel, there is but one answer. It is looking 
to Jesus. To the powerful simplicity of 
his truth and the efficient strength of his 
leadership the world is even now turning 
as its best hope. There is weakness and 
fault enough in this, I know, and there is 
too much forgetfulness of his precepts and 
his spirit. The worldly impulse is always 
with us, ready to sweep men and nations 
off into disloyal selfishness and pride. 
Nevertheless it is recognized as it never 
was before, that whether we are willing to 
act upon it or not, the spirit of Jesus is 
the only spirit that can work peace and 
righteousness among men and nations, and 
that in him, if we would let him have his 
way, there is actual power to right our 
wrongs and heal our woes. His personal- 
ity stands out impressive and revered, and 
there is to-day a devotion to the real 
Christ, in work and service, such as no 
other age has known. The power still 
lives. Sometimes with an enthusiastic joy, 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER II I 

and sometimes with a pathetic confidence, 
our own time turns to him who is the 
voice of God among us, uttering with 
authority the word of power and hope. 

One transparent and triumphant evi- 
dence of the strength and persistence of 
the Christian power is ever before us. It 
resides in this, that in all the ages the 
Christian people and the Christian doc- 
trine have been kept in the world, and 
kept possessed in good degree of their 
characteristic vitality. That the Christian 
people are still here, and in spite of all 
imperfections are still bearing essentially 
the Christian character, we know quite 
well. It is equally true that the doctrine 
of to-day is essentially the doctrine of the 
beginning, and that it still persists in its 
original character, as spiritual reality ex- 
perienced. It has come down to us not 
merely as a set of ideas, but as a set of 
ideas wrought into life and in life persist- 
ing ; and the realities experienced and the 



112 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

life persisting are the same as at the first. 
I said that some power originally produced 
the Christian people and the Christian 
doctrine, and gave the doctrine to the 
people as a factor in their life. Now I 
add that some power, in spite of all diffi- 
culties and failures, has kept them in the 
world till now. The good seed was cast 
into a thorn-field, and yet there is a har- 
vest, after many days. In human affairs 
there has been much to dissipate the 
Christian energy, to depress its operation 
and to injure its fruits. It has met indif- 
ference and opposition without, and mis- 
conception, unfaithfulness, lukewarmness, 
sometimes treachery, within, and yet the 
power has kept its product in existence, 
and has not lost its hold upon mankind. 
Differences in the age and imperfections 
in the product often conceal the fact, but 
the fact is that we have here and now, and 
throughout the Christian world, essentially 
the same realities in human' experience 



THE CHRISTIAN PO WER 1 1 3 

that appeared among the friends of Jesns 
immediately after his departure. There 
has been a power sufficient to preserve 
them until now. 

This is all that I must take time to say 
upon the history of the Christian power. 
Such facts of course bring their question. 
What is the most probable source of the 
Christian power? Why was it, we are 
led to ask, that the Christian people 
sprang up, and came out into history with 
the Christian truth fused into doctrine 
in their experience ? What has caused 
the wide usefulness of Christianity in the 
world? Why has it so deeply satisfied 
the needs of man ? Why has it so often 
been able to overcome scepticism and 
establish faith ? What has kept the peo- 
ple and the doctrine in the world till now ? 
and wherein lies the present strength of 
Christianity? Whence, in a word, comes 
the Christian power ? 

8 



114 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

When I answer this question as I think 
it should be answered, what will you 
accuse me of ? If you accuse me of beg- 
ging the question, I shall deny the validity 
of the charge. If you accuse me of mak- 
ing it all too simple, at that I shall not be 
troubled. I have long since learned that 
the true is the simple, and that we human 
beings have wasted centuries, all told, in 
devising needlessly complicated explana- 
tions of things. If my explanation is 
simple, simple let it be ; and if you intend 
to object to it, object on some better 
ground than that. 

My answer is that the most reasonable 
account of the power of Christianity is that 
Christianity is true. This is the most natu- 
ral explanation that can be given of that 
strong, effective, victorious power which 
certainly appeared in the first days of our 
faith, which has been fighting its enemies 
ever since, and which still remains upon 
the field. 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 115 

This answer is certainly very short. To 
one who does not at once accept it, it 
sounds like begging the question. That 
is just because it is so short and compact, 
and the meaning of it has not been brought 
out. I should be most unwilling to leave 
it thus curt and unexpanded, for there is 
need of unfolding its meaning if it is to 
be received as a true answer. We may 
not all mean the same thing when we say 
that Christianity is true. I presume there 
are many who have used the expression, 
some accepting it and some rejecting, 
who have never distinctly asked them- 
selves what they meant by it. In many 
minds, both of believers and of unbelievers 
concerning Christianity, there is no clear 
idea of what it is for Christianity to be 
true. There are so many definitions of 
Christianity implied in the thoughts of 
different persons, the central realities 
are surrounded by so great a variety of 
explanations and additions, and the short 



Il6 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

word " true " may mean so many things, 
that it is no wonder if ambiguity hangs 
over the main idea, and we may differ 
widely without knowing it, as to what we 
mean by saying that Christianity is true. I 
am anxious that the right meaning of this 
central assertion may be clearly perceived. 
If we understand it, we can judge whether 
I am right in assigning the truth of Chris- 
tianity as the best explanation of its power. 
What is it, then, for Christianity to be 
true ? When any one affirms that Chris- 
tianity is true, he means, or ought to 
mean, that Christianity is made up of 
realities ; that what it represents as real is 
real ; that, in the realm of the soul, things 
are as it declares that they are ; that its 
affirmations accord with fact, and its ex- 
periences are experiences of reality. It is 
meant that Christianity sets forth the 
great spiritual realities as they are, and 
nothing but the test of genuine experiment 
is needed to prove it. 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER \\J 

Notice, I beg, where it is that I thus 
place the centre of Christianity, and where 
I take my stand for the purpose of defini- 
tion. I place the centre of Christianity 
not in its statements, but in its realities 
and experiences. I do not identify the 
truth of Christianity with the statements 
of its advocates, or any of them, concern- 
ing it, or with the explanations that they 
have offered of its facts, or with the decla- 
rations of its creeds, whether special or 
ecumenical. In all these matters there 
may be wide and irreconcilable differences. 
I place the centre of Christianity in its 
realities and experiences, and there I take 
my stand for the purpose of definition. 
For Christianity to be true is for its real- 
ities to be realities, experienceable, and 
experienced. If Christianity is true, it 
sets forth things that are, in the realm of 
the soul. It testifies according to truth, 
concerning the eternal realities. 

But this statement in turn needs to be 



Il8 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

filled out, for only in the filling-out of it 
can the proof of it be found. Suppose 
that Christianity is true: then what is 
true ? What is the truth, or what are the 
realities, involved ? This, after all is our 
question. We have not told what we 
mean by saying that Christianity is true, 
until we have unfolded our statement 
here, and set before ourselves what it is 
that is true, or real, in Christianity. 

I shall answer the question by reaffirm- 
ing the elements that compose the Chris- 
tian doctrine in the experience of the 
Christian people: and the reaffirmation 
will not be a waste of words. If Chris- 
tianity is true, then these great elements 
entered into it by right, and belong in all 
right experience of men, because they rep- 
resent the eternal reality. I hold that 
Christianity is true : that is, I believe that 
the great elements that make up the 
Christian doctrine, by means of the Chris- 
tian experience, accord with the eternal 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 119 

reality, and rightly represent it. Listen 
now to the statement of what it is for 
Christianity to be true. 

If Christianity is true, Gocl is the su- 
premely good Being that Jesus declared 
him to be. He really is at heart a Father 
to us men, and our right and normal rela- 
tion to him is that of children living at 
home with the eternal goodness. When 
we live as we ought, we shall find our- 
selves living as true sons, in loyal family 
fellowship with the best being that the 
heart of man can conceive. These are the 
facts, if Christianity is true : this is the 
kind of God that there is, and there is no 
other. This is the true and real meaning 
of existence for us men. The world is 
the world of such a God, holy and gracious, 
sin-hating and fatherly. Into the world 
of such a God, and into life with such a 
meaning, we are all born, if Christianity is 
true. It is the duty and the privilege of 
every one of us to be living at home with 



120 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

the absolutely good and holy God, in filial 
fellowship : and the better we become ac- 
quainted with our God, if Christianity is 
true, the more thoroughly shall we know 
him as the perfect and glorious One, in 
whom all our being finds full rest and 
satisfaction. 

Again, if Christianity is true, Jesus 
Christ is really the gift of God to us men 
for our spiritual salvation. He really is 
for us the way and the truth and the life. 
He finds us astray in moral evil and brings 
us home. We were forfeiting in a sinful 
life our privilege of filial life with the 
eternal goodness. He came to us to save 
us out of our sin ; and he does bring us 
out of our sin, into eternal life with God. 
He really does stand to us as Saviour. In 
what he has done for us in his life and 
death there is a genuine reality, rich in 
blessing for us and for all men. If Chris- 
tianity is true, Jesus Christ is God's way 
to us, and our way to God. 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 121 

Again, if Christianity is true, God is not 
wholly outside of us, addressing us from 
beyond ourselves. We have not told the 
whole when we have said that in Christ 
he comes to us and seeks us for our good. 
It is true also that the living God really 
dwells in our souls. He is a God within. 
He convinces us of evil by actual inward 
influence. He really renews our hearts, 
working character such as he desires to 
see in us. He truly communes with us in 
the secret place of the heart. He teaches 
truth to the soul of man, by real inward 
suggestion. If Christianity is true, God 
comes as near to us as we are to ourselves, 
and we possess him as an actual indwel- 
ling companion. 

Again, if Christianity is true, the only 
right inspiration of life and guide of con- 
duct in all relations is what Jesus said it 
was, — namely, love. The life of sonship 
toward God is thereby a life of brother- 
hood toward men. When we live accord- 



122 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

ing to love toward our fellows, we do the 
thing that ought to be, and make of life 
what life ought to be. When unselfish- 
ness and the highest helpful affection form 
our law of living, then we have struck a 
chord in the eternal harmony, — and all 
that is dissonant with love is discord to 
the eternal harmony. This is the spiritual 
and practical reality, in this world and in 
any other world that there may be. This 
is the thing that is. Here is the clue to 
the significance of our life, here is the key- 
note of our duty, here is the true method 
for all our doings. If Christianity is true, 
God is love, and all men ought to be love, 
and existence is successful only so far as 
existence means love. 

And again, if Christianity is true, there 
is for all of us, corresponding to these 
spiritual realities, a genuine transforming 
energy. We are not talking of theories, 
or supposing cases : we are not discussing 
far off the good that is to be approved 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 23 

and desired but cannot be attained. Here 
is a genuine might for action. Here dwells 
the power of God for salvation. The sav- 
ing agency of Christ is real, and the in- 
dwelling Spirit actually does his work. 
Transformation is an actual experience, a 
result attained. Character does become 
changed when these forces have their way. 
Sin can be conquered, holiness is possible. 
High virtue is within our reach, and effec- 
tive power to do good in the needy world 
can be had. We can be brought to live at 
home with God in holy and happy fellow- 
ship, and to live in helpful love among 
men. All this has been done, and can be 
done again. 

If Christianity is true, I say once more, 
these are the facts in our case, and in the 
case of all men : this is the thing that is : 
this is what existence means : when we put 
reality to the test of sincere experiment, 
this is what we shall find the genuine and 
eternal reality to be. For Christianity to 



124 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

be true is for these things to be so, and 
to be verifiable, and verified, in experi- 
ence. Let our individual understanding of 
these realities be adequate or inadequate, 
that makes no difference with the facts. 
Though we had no understanding of them 
at all, nay, though we were totally igno- 
rant of them, these are the facts : this is 
the kind of world we have been born 
into : this is what our existence signifies. 
Though we should disagree widely in our 
interpretation of these realities, and should 
even grow so blind in heart as to forget 
our brotherhood and count one another 
aliens because of our disagreement, still 
these are the realities, and these are the 
realities forever. God is the holy Being 
with whom we ought to live as children, 
Christ is the Saviour who seeks to bring 
us thither, the Holy Spirit is the indwell- 
ing Friend, love is the law of life, and 
the holy victory may be ours. 

Now what I am affirming is, that the 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 25 

best explanation of the power of Chris- 
tianity among men is that Christianity 
is trne : that Christianity sets forth the 
things of the soul as they are. The power 
is best accounted for by supposing that 
the true representation of the meaning 
of the soul's life is here given, so that 
to experience what Christianity proposes 
is to experience the thing that is, and thus 
to find eternal foundations. If this were 
so, then power would follow, even the 
power that attends upon reality when it 
is put to the test. If this were so, then 
the power of the living God himself would 
go forth in Christianity, to make it effec- 
tive. That this is so, I thoroughly believe. 
The Christian experience is experience of 
the eternal reality. This is why Chris- 
tianity, presented in its spiritual sim- 
plicity, has always appealed successfully 
to the best that is in man : it is adapted to 
man's soul and life, and man to it. Indeed, 
all intelligent being is adapted to Chris- 



126 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

tianity and Christianity to it, because 
Christianity sets forth the realities that 
give to all intelligent being its significance. 
Tertullian told in the early centuries of 
" the human soul which is naturally Chris- 
tian ; ' by which he meant that between 
the constitution and destiny of the human 
soul and the religion that we have in 
Christ there is a natural affinity and a 
mutual adaptation. He was right. In 
Christianity the soul breathes the native 
air of the world for which it was born, and 
meets the announcement and experience of 
the truth for which it was made. Conse- 
quently it is the lower elements in the 
soul's life that draw it awav from Christ, 
while the worthiest elements are respon- 
sive to his touch. Sound judgment may 
often bring strong objection against cer- 
tain interpretations of the great realities, 
which may have been offered as if they 
were identical with them, but when we 
come to the realities themselves, behold, 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 127 

they are good, and the noblest in the soul 
affirms it. Christ calls for the best and 
worthiest that man is capable of, and 
every one that is of the truth hears his 
voice. This power in Christianity to win 
the response of the best in man is good 
evidence that the voice is indeed the voice 
of truth. 

I have claimed that the truth of Chris- 
tianity is the best explanation of the age- 
long power of Christianity. Yet in any 
adequate account of that power as actually 
at work there is one other thing to be 
mentioned. I must speak a word about 
its manner of laying hold upon men. 
Even truth is not always powerful. Even 
truth assented to, and truth believed, may 
sometimes fail of power. There was an 
element abundantly present in the life of 
the first Christian days, and present more 
or less at every stage of the long Christian 
movement, that must be counted in before 



128 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

we have placed in sight the entire material 
out of which power was made. We must 
take account of the mighty element of 
feeling. It is when realities are felt to be 
realities that they become powerful in the 
life of mankind. 

Here we have to acknowledge a strange 
and almost incurable error. We very well 
know that in the moral and religious realm 
the impulse of feeling is needed if truth is 
to go forth to victory, and yet we are con- 
stantly overlooking it. We are constantly 
assuming that truth is to be influential 
upon men chiefly through the intellect. 
To the intellect, we think, truth makes its 
appeal. Truth can be stated. It belongs 
to the mind, it is to be handled in thought, 
it is to be estimated by the judgment. 
Truth can be accepted as truth, — that is, 
as correct, valid, and worthy to be held, — 
and what more is there to be done ? It 
can doubtless be completed or enriched by 
further additions or modifications, brought 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 29 

in by the same process of the intellect 
continued : the statement of it can be 
made more satisfactory, and the uses of 
it more plain, but we do not habitually 
look to other processes than these as 
equally important. Anything that cannot 
be clearly stated, we sometimes allow 
ourselves to say, cannot be true, and 
certainly cannot be expected to exert 
power upon men. With this general idea 
about truth we make our statements as 
accurate as we can. We draw up our 
creeds and confessions, and are satisfied 
with our expression of truth, and declare 
that this, now clearly stated, is what we 
hold ; and then we assume that the truth 
in the case has been adequately treated, 
and expect it to be powerful. In fact, we 
have often made up our creeds somewhat 
as a geologist makes up his description of 
the geological column, or a chemist his 
statement of the result of his analysis. 
We set forth the thing that we suppose to 

9 



130 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

be correct, and are content, under the 
impression that truth is now ready for 
the wars. 

And then very often we are disappointed. 
Truth thus equipped does not seem after 
all to be prepared for victorious battle. 
Statements do not win the day. The 
fact is that in the moral and religious 
realm thought, be it ever so clear, is only 
the preparation for power, not the very 
means of power itself. Power comes with 
feeling. Truth becomes effective by being 
felt to be truth. Stated in accurate forms 
it has a very neat appearance, and is con- 
venient for reference and consultation, 
but there is no inward necessity that we 
should do anything about it. Not until 
some one feels that something is true does 
that something go out with effective 
power into the world. Unfelt knowledge 
is scarcely more fruitful than ignorance. 
Unfelt truth lies unused. In order to be- 
come effective, truth must be perceived as 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 131 

truth in the sensitive part of the interior 
life, whence the compelling influence upon 
the springs of action proceeds. If the out- 
come of the life of Jesus had been ever so 
clear and true a set of propositions, writ- 
ten out to be preserved, and there had 
been nothing more, we might never have 
heard of Christianity. There would have 
been no Christianity, but only a teaching. 
When the truth that Jesus imparted to 
his friends came to be felt as truth, and 
influential in the realm of the affections, 
then it came to have power, and only 
then. ■ 

But the truth that Jesus had given 
them did come to be felt as truth. This 
is exactly the thing that did happen. The 
reality took possession of the men, the 
Spirit showed it to them, and then the 
Christian power was born. We have in 
the New Testament the vivid portrayal of 
this very thing. I wish I might set before 
you the New Testament picture of the 



132 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

early Christian feeling. If I attempt it, 
you will not think that I am claiming 
that those first Christians did full justice 
to the realities of which I speak. I am 
not claiming that, for of course I know 
the imperfectness of it all, since it was all 
human. Yet I am not drawing a false 
picture, for the sense of these realities was 
genuine, and to represent it is to show the 
very thing that set Christianity in motion 
as a living force. 

The first Christian reality to enter into 
the world of feeling appears to have been 
the Saviourhood of Jesus. It now came 
to pass that his disciples grasped the mean- 
ing of what they had seen and heard, and 
it came home to them with moving power. 
In the realm of feeling it now was real to 
them that for their sake he had lived and 
died and risen again, and was now tri- 
umphant in God's glory. They felt that 
they had a Saviour from their sin and loss, 
who filled them with new life which was 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 33 

life eternal. Christ had brought them 
home to God. To God? and what was 
God to them now, in this new day of feel- 
ing? God was not to them an article of 
faith in creed, but a reality in their own 
life. God was a reality that redeemed 
them from sin and fear and low living, and 
from mortality itself ; and the power of 
this reality was actually upon them, to 
make all things new. They felt them- 
selves at home with God, forgiven, ac- 
cepted, made his children, domiciled with 
him in the home of the spirit. Nay, more 
and closer, God was not merely with them, 
he was in them. Their belief in the Holy 
Spirit was simply their sense of the in- 
wardness of this divine gift, their feeling 
of God within. It was their consciouness 
that God had come nearer than to be 
among them, but had passed the door of 
their being and was inhabiting them as a 
temple or a home. And now they felt, yes, 
felt, that love was the atmosphere of their 



134 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

being. The love of God and Christ had 
been poured out around them and within, 
and love constituted their very life. So 
love, in the fine forms of fellowship, kind- 
ness, mutual helpfulness, and missionary 
zeal, became a life and power among the 
Christians : they actually loved one an- 
other, and felt the flame of love within 
themselves. And in the same manner the 
remaining element, the reality of a success- 
ful Christian holiness and victory, became 
a vital thing. Men now felt that great 
things were possible : they not merely 
thought it and affirmed it as a matter of 
belief, as we are always ready to do, but 
felt it, as we sometimes do not. Hence 
naturally sprang courage and high en- 
deavor, and splendid success. Religion 
passed into virtue, because the possibility 
of high success was felt, and livingly be- 
lieved in. Reality got possession of feel- 
ing, and then the day of power had come. 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 135 

In form, I have now been speaking of the 
first days and the springing-up of power, 
but in fact, I have described what has 
given power to Christianity in all times. 
Where do you find your powerful men, 
— your Augustine, Luther, John Wes- 
ley? Where are your reformers, puritans, 
leaders? They are men of feeling, in 
whom realities live. They need not be 
emotional men, in the popular sense of 
that word, but they are men of feeling in 
the nobler sense, men to whom the Chris- 
tian realities are living things, felt in their 
greatness and importance. When have 
been the ages of power? When, but when 
the sense of God and Christ came in, and 
thought was warmed to vigor, and faith 
became a passion? Who are the weaker 
men, and when have come the times of 
feebleness ? The weaker men, for the ag- 
gressive purposes of God, are the men 
who, whatever they may think, do not 
feel: and the feebler periods are those in 



I36 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

which the pulses have run low and the 
great realities found but dull response in 
the affections and emotions of the Chris- 
tian people. Power goes with feeling. 

All this is just as simple as I said it 
was. The power of Christianity resides 
in the twofold fact that Christianity is 
true, and is felt as true. There is reality, 
and there is sense of reality, — and then 
there is power. The reality that we have 
in Christ is worthy to be profoundly felt, 
and the sense of such reality as this ought 
to be sufficient to move the world. When 
it was anything like adequate, it has moved 
the world. 

It may seem to some one that I am 
building too much on feeling, or the sense 
of something being true. Feeling, it may 
be objected, is no test of truth. We may 
feel, most intensely, something unreal: 
wherefore the sense of reality in the Chris- 
tian testimony must not be taken as valid 
proof of that testimony. To this I should 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 37 

say that certainly feeling often takes hold 
on error, and becomes the stimulant of 
folly. Feeling is no proof of truth. But 
I would add that neither is feeling any 
evidence that truth is absent, and the pres- 
ence of it does not establish a probability 
that truth is not there. Is not feeling the 
normal accompaniment of truth ? Reality 
and the sense of reality ought to be insep- 
arable companions. It is the perfection of 
relation between man and truth that man 
shall feel the thing that is, and be dull to 
the thing that is not. If there is reality 
present, and reality that concerns the soul, 
it is the normal and worthy thing for the 
sensitive soul, perceiving its presence, to 
feel with the keenest intensity the serious- 
ness, the preciousness, the glory, of that 
which is so real. Certain it is that eternal 
and necessary realities, that touch upon 
the life and destiny of the soul, are worthy 
to stir the deepest feeling, according to 
their character. Hence, in spite of all 



138 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

objection from the fallibility of feeling, I 
look upon the Christian power as a noble 
confirmation of the truth of Christianity. 
The combination of facts is this. Procla- 
mation is made of certain alleged realities. 
They are realities in the eternal order of 
things, pertaining to the character of eter- 
nal Being and the relation of man to the 
eternal love and holiness. The proclama- 
tion reaches the hearts of certain men, and 
in a sincere experience the men are pos- 
sessed by the warm and living certainty 
that the proclamation brings them truth. 
They cast themselves upon the alleged 
realities, and find them solid, and feel 
them true. Now there springs up in them 
a life rich and sweet with holy graces. 
Their destiny is provided for, their duty 
grows real to them, their life at home with 
God transforms their character. The foun- 
dations of being now stand clear and strong 
for them. Warm and urgent love springs 
up strong in their hearts, and they become 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 39 

heralds of life and grace to other souls. 
The world grows sweeter and purer by 
reason of their presence. Hindrances to 
their higher life and their holy efficiency 
are on every side, and nothing about them 
attains to the ideal of perfection, and yet 
they continue age after age in the world, 
and the realities are proclaimed after two 
thousand years essentially as they were at 
first, and the same kind of power goes 
forth into the world from the people of 
the faith. What does all this mean ? It 
means that truth is here. Each part of 
this great process tends to validate all the 
rest. The one great thing that is rendered 
daily more certain to us is that the alleged 
realities from which the process took its 
start are realities indeed. The structure 
honors the foundation. The power of 
Christianity, related as it is to the high 
character of Christianity, to its fitness to 
serve as key to the meaning of existence, 
and to its ability to bless all whom it 



I40 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

touches, is a living evidence that the whole 
is true, and the foundation of Christianity 
is laid in the verities of God. 

A word now from the practical side, 
about the power of Christianity as some- 
thing that we all have to do with. Some 
of us are preaching Christianity, and glory 
in our work. Some, without preaching it, 
are trying to live it, and to commend it as 
they may. Some of us are listening to it 
from the outside, perhaps with conviction 
that it is true, perhaps without it. In one 
question we are all interested, each in his 
own way : I mean the question where the 
power of Christianity at present may rea- 
sonably be expected to reside and be dis- 
covered. What is a fair statement as to 
the seat of power in Christianity to-day? 
What shall we who wish to commend 
Christianity rely upon ? and what shall we 
who listen to Christianity attune our hearts 
to respond to? 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 141 

Perhaps for this moment it may help us 
to divide power into its two parts, — value 
and efficiency. The value of Christianity, 
upon which we must rely for power with 
men, resides in its truth, in the sense in 
which its truth has now been represented. 
The fact that in the central affirmations of 
Christianity the central realities of exist- 
ence are affirmed, — this is the value of 
Christianity, and this is the seat of power. 
If this were not so, Christianity would be 
simply one of the vain imaginings of men ; 
for it does profess to set forth the eternal 
verity. The eternal verity it does set 
forth. Christianity describes you as you 
are, in view of the true and abiding tests : 
it tells you what you need, offers you what 
you must have, exhibits life as it is, leads 
you to your right and normal place in 
God, shows you the right way to live your 
daily life, gives you the true conception of 
the world you live in, inspires you with 
the motive that is right forever, and gives 



I42 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

you actual possession of the good concern- 
ing which the nations of mankind have 
now * theorized and now agonized since 
human life began. This is the value of 
Christianity, and this is the truth to set 
forth, in various parts and forms, for the 
convincing and winning of men. The 
value of Christianity lies in its bringing 
the message of truth, and telling the 
things that are, — and, beyond this, in its 
having the power to conform us to things 
as they are, and bring us to our true home 
in God. And when the message has been 
uttered, and has sunk down into our hearts 
so that we can perceive of what sort it 
really is, we find this infinitely great, con- 
soling and uplifting word at the centre of 
it, that the real is the good : the eternally 
real is the eternally good : eternal being is 
holy and gracious: our best is the finite 
counterpart of the infinite goodness: and 
hope rather than fear, confidence rather 
than doubt, is the keynote of existence. 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 43 

This is the appeal to make. It can be 
made in a thousand forms, but this is the 
tone that should sound through all of 
them. This also is the appeal to listen 
for, and to listen to. When Christianity 
is presented to you in this tone and spirit, 
there is something there that no one can 
afford to miss. Let other appeals pass by 
you if you must, but never fail to have an 
ear for this great appeal of value. 

If we ask where we are to look for effi- 
ciency in the present Christianity, — that 
is to say, what is to make it now effective 
in drawing men to its side and maintaining 
its active force, — we must say nothing 
that would obscure the efficiency of its 
value. Here first we must look for power, 
to the clear and enthusiastic presentation 
of the glorious view of the value of Chris- 
tianity at which I have just hinted. It is 
by virtue of its truth that Christianity 
must win its way, and nothing must be 
said that will propose any substitute for 



144 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

this, or lead to reliance upon any other 
means of power as equal to this. Yet we 
cannot overlook the fact that the efficiency 
of truth among men depends in great 
measure upon the strength and vividness 
of the sense of truth in those who hold it 
forth. That the Christian people may 
have a rich and constraining sense of the 
truth that they are offering to the world, 
this is the next thing needful for the effi- 
ciency of our religion. I have read a 
criticism upon the converts that a visitor 
found in some of the mission-fields in Asia, 
to the effect that although they showed 
the signs of sincerity in their new faith, 
they did not have the appearance of men 
who were enthusiastically full of the feel- 
ing that they had in their new faith the 
best thing in the world and the best thing 
that the heart of man could imagine. The 
criticism was altogether a friendly one. I 
do not know how just it was, but from 
what I know of Christians in America I 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 45 

am prepared to believe that it was not un- 
fair to new-born Christians in the East. 
It is our defect that we lack so much the 
sense of having the best thing in the 
world, and the best thing in any world, in 
our Christian faith. We say that we have 
it, and hold it as our theory, but we do 
not feel it with a constraining gladness 
and an enthusiastic zeal. The coming of 
such a sense of our heavenly gift is need- 
ful if we are to have the power that we 
desire. 

We often say that our time is not favor- 
able to enthusiasm in spiritual things ; and 
it is largely true. We are in a day of 
scientific thought, and of critical activity. 
It is a great period of transition, in which 
all that can be removed is being shaken, 
that the things that cannot be shaken may 
remain. Amid so many questions as are 
abroad in our time, how, it is asked, can 
we maintain an enthusiastic confidence? 

Who knows what we shall next be invited 

10 



146 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

to surrender, or at least to modify ? How 
shall we keep our sense of the reality of 
the things that our religion tells us of? 
and how shall we dare invite intelligent 
men in such a time to cast in their lot 
with our religion? Must we not keep 
along as well as we can till a period of 
firmer confidence dawns upon us, hoping 
by and by to be able to commend our faith 
more strongly? And would it not be as 
well for our friends who have not received 
Christianity to wait until that better day, 
before accepting it as true and vital for 
themselves ? 

To this I answer, that I am profoundly 
convinced that our generation needs just 
such a conception of Christianity as I have 
endeavored to present in these three ad- 
dresses, and such an experience as I have 
declared to be of the substance of our reli- 
gion. We want to see the simplicity of 
our religion, and to hold as essential to it 
only what really is essential. We often 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 47 



overburden ourselves for the Christian 
purpose. We undertake to hold too much. 
We bind our theories and interpretations 
in as a part of the substance of Christian- 
ity. If a few of us alone could do this, 
the way might look easier, at least to us, 
but the trouble is that others who dissent 
from us do the same, and Christianity be- 
comes weighted with a variety of con- 
flicting theories as to the meaning of its 
experimental facts. If we go back to the 
beginnings, we find a declaration of eternal 
realities, such as each soul of man needs 
to know, and can rest in, and find eternal 
life by knowing. For my own part, I am 
content with calling my fellow-men to 
accept and live by these realities. This 
I can do, and this I do, with the utmost 
confidence. I believe that the God and 
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is the liv- 
ing God, the only God that there is, and 
that led by Jesus Christ we may all come 
home to him where we belong, and live our 



148 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 

normal life by being Christians. To the 
life of love in God I believe that the Holy 
Spirit of power is leading us. This I be- 
lieve to be the right way for high and low, 
for ignorant and learned. This I would 
as soon declare in a great university as in 
the lowliest country meeting-house. This 
message I do not have to defend as I 
should be obliged to defend an elaborate 
scheme of thought. I will discuss the 
scheme of thought that is involved in the 
message, when and where it is necessary, 
but the Christianity that I preach I preach 
because it is true to the eternal realities, 
and is fit to be received at once by any 
soul that desires to live in accordance with 
the things that are. I am not claiming for 
myself a" power that corresponds to this 
secret of power that I believe in. But I 
am anxious that the Christian people should 
learn that their Christian doctrine consists 
in the truth that they possess in the com- 
mon Christian experience, and know that 



THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 49 

its power dwells in its reality, and in their 
sense of its reality. To what should we 
look for power if not to this, that the 
Christian people know what they possess, 
and offer it for what it is, an experimental 
possession of the eternal verities? The 
way of simplicity and confidence is the 
way of power. 

I am thankful for the opportunity to 
speak these words in this presence. May 
the power of the Christian truth rest upon 
us all. 



AN OUTLINE 

of 



Christian Theology. 

BY 

WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE, D.D. 

Professor of Theology at Colgate 
University, Hamilton, New York. 



Crown 8vo . . . $2.50 net. 



'T^HIS is the simplest, clearest, most radical, and most 
spiritual theological treatise we have ever seen. 
It is, indeed, in these four characteristics rather a 
treatise on religion than on theology. It is vital, not 
scholastic ; a minister to largeness of life, through clear- 
ness of thought. . . . To ministers holding in whole or 
in part the new philosophy, we recommend this vol- 
ume, as showing them how to use that philosophy to 
conserve, nourish, and strengthen the old faith. — The 
Outlook. 



We have read it with great interest. Its author, 
though so modest as not to prefix the word " Professor" 
to his name, at once commands our respect. He is a 
clear thinker, a fine scholar, a scientific and philosophi- 
cal theologian. The work is able, it is stimulating, it is 



AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 



fresh, and reveals him in touch with the latest thought 
of the day. It is in many respects an epoch-making 
book. . . . We commend this book to any who desire 
to get the clearest statement of the new theology that 
can be found in English. — Presbyterian and Reformed 
Review. 



Professor Marcus Dods writes : — 

" Has it ever happened to any of our readers to take 
up a work on systematic theology, with the familiar 
divisions, ' God/ « Man/ ' Sin/ Christ/ ' The Holy Spirit/ 
'The Church/ 'The Last Things/ and open it with a 
sigh of weariness and dread, and find himself fascinated 
and enthralled, and compelled to read on to the last 
word? Let any one who craves a new experience of 
this kind, procure Dr. Clarke's ' Outline.' We guarantee 
that he will learn more, with greater pleasure, than he 
is likely to learn in any other systematic theology." 



We have received from America many useful con- 
tributions to theological literature, but few that sur- 
pass this either as theology or as literature. — British 
Weekly. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

Publishers, 

153-157 Fifth Avenue . . NEW YORK. 



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